


^' 




v 






^ 

^'j 



-0^ 












^^ 



.0" 









^. ^■^NkVOr' 



















* ? 



^*l°x. 




















THE HISTORY 



OF 



THE CONSOLIDATION 



OF THE 



CITY OF PHILADELPHIA. 



BY ELI K. PRICE. 



■r n. 



PHILADELPHIA: 4 

J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO. 

1873. 



.4-4- 



PREPARED IN ACCORDANCE WITH A REQUEST 

OF 

THE HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF PENNSYLVANIA. 




Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1873, by 

J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO., 
In the Office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington, 



Lippincott's Press, 
Philadelphia. 



<i dt C £t i: 



XXX «♦ 



To the venerated Senior of the Philadelphia Bar, who is yet, at 
great age, spared by a kind Providence, to shed a lustre upon our 
profession, this brief history is dedicated. Though not personally an 
actor in the work of consolidation, the counsel and countenance of 
Horace Binney were invaluable to his active juniors, and with the 
public largely influential. With the writer his opinion was authori- 
tative to induce him to submit to the demand of his fellow-citizens 
to represent them in the Senate. It is fitting, therefore, that this 
report of the stewardship of their representatives should be presented 
to Horace Binney, and that the actors in the work achieved should 
claim for it the protecting influence of his name through later genera- 
tions. To his acceptance, then, and to the favorable regards of the 
writer's associates in preparing and carrying the Act of Consolidation, 
and to the safekeeping of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, he 
commits this history, in the hope that it may be preserved in the 
remembrance of the Citizens of Philadelphia. 

ELI K. PRICE. 
December, 1872. 



Hall of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, No. 820 Spruce Street, 

Philadelphia, October 30th, 1872. 

Dear Sir, — It gives me pleasure to inform you that, on motion of 
Mr, Wallace, the following resolution was unanimously adopted at 
the stated meeting of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, October 
28th, 1872: 

Resolved, That the Hon. Eli K. Price be respectfully requested to 
prepare, for the use of the Society, a history of the Consolidation of 
the various corporations, boroughs, districts, or other municipal bodies 
which now, in their united form, constitute the City of Philadelphia, 
and that a copy of this resolution be sent to Mr. Price. 

In the hope that you will be able to comply with the wishes of 
the Society so unanimously expressed, 
I am, dear sir. 

Very respectfully, 

James Shrigley, 

Secretary of Council. 
Hon. Eli K. Price. 



I* (V) 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER I. 

PAGE 

The First and Second Charters of the City .... 9 

CHAPTER 11. 

Measures that preceded and produced Consolidation . . .14 

CHAPTER IH. 
The Passage of the Act of Consolidation . . . . • 3^ 

CHAPTER IV. 
Grounds presented for the Passage of the Act . . . -49 

CHAPTER V. 

Principal Provisions of the Consolidation Act . . . .82 

CHAPTER VI. 
The Consolidation Festivities ....... 90 

CHAPTER VII. 
The Mobs that preceded Consolidation no 

CHAPTER VIII. 

Advantages of Consolidation . . - . . , .120 

CHAPTER IX. 
Conclusion 133 



( vii 



THE HISTORY OF THE CONSOLIDATION 



OF THE 



CITY OF PHILADELPHIA. 



CHAPTER I. 

THE FIRST AND SECOND CHARTERS OF THE CITY. 

William Penn landed at New Castle, from the 
ship Welcome, on the 24th day of October, 1682. 
The first Assembly was held at Upland, — now Ches- 
ter, — from the 4th to the 7th of December, 1682, and 
then and there " The Great Law" was passed. 

By the "Conditions and Concessions" agreed upon 
by William Penn and the First Purchasers, in Eng- 
land, the nth of July, 1681, it.was agreed: — "First; 
That so soon as it pleaseth God that the above per- 
sons arrive there, a certain quantity of Land or 
ground Plot shall be laid out for a large Town or 
City, in the most convenient place upon the river for 
health and navigation ; and every Purchaser and Ad- 
venturer shall, by lot, have so much land therein as 
will answer to the proportion which he hath bought, 
or taken up upon Rent." " II. That the land in the 
Town be laid out together after the proportion of Ten 
thousand acres of the whole country, that is, Two 
A* • (9) 



JO CONSOLIDA TION. 

hundred acres, // the place zvill bear iC " V. That 
the proportion of lands that shall be laid out in the 
first great Town or City, for every Purchaser, shall be 
after the proportion of Ten acres for every Five hun- 
dred acres purchased, if the place will allow it!' 

The survey of the Town had been in hand by 
Thomas Home, under instructions from William 
Penn, in 1681 and 1682 ; and on the 30th day of the 
Second month (then April, as December had been 
called Tenth month), he issued his Warrant to 
Thomas Holme, William Haige, John Bezer, and 
Nathaniel Allen, to see the lots surveyed awarded to 
the purchasers. It is obvious that these lots were 
much less than the proportion mentioned in the 
" Concessions," as the size of the Town did not allow 
of lots so large ; but Liberty lots were allotted of 
much larger size. (See John Reed's Map.) 

William Penn, on the 1 6th of the Sixth month, 
1683, wrote: '' Philadelphia, the expectation of those 
that are concerned in this Province, is at last laid out 
to the great content of those here that are anyways 
interested therein." And "this I will say, for the 
good providence of God, that, of all the many places 
I have seen in the world, I remember not one better 
seated." , " It is advanced, within less than a year, to 
about four-score houses and cottages." And Thomas 
Holme, the Surveyor-General, in his advertisement 
for purchasers, says : " The City of Philadelphia now 
extends from river to river, two miles, and in breadth 
near a mile ; and the Governor, as a further mani- 
festation of his kindness unto the purchasers, hath 
freely given them their respective lots in the City, 



OLD CHARTERS. II 

without defalcation of any of their quantities of pur- 
chased lands, and as it is now placed and modelled 
between two rivers upon a neck of land, and that 
ships may ride in good anchorage in six or eight 
fathom water in both, close to the City, and the 
land of the City level, dry and wholesome ; such a 
situation is scarce to be paralleled. The model of 
this City appears by a small draft now made, and 
may hereafter, when time permits, be augmented." 
Two square miles made the town plot 1280 acres. 

But Philadelphia was not at first legally incorpo- 
rated as a City. At a Council held at Philadelphia 
the 26th of Fifth month, 1684, present, William 
Penn, Proprietary and Governor, and ten in Council, 
"Thomas Lloyd, Thomas Holmes, William Haigue, 
appointed to draw up a Charter for Philadelphia to 
be made a Boroiigli^ consisting of a Mayor and six 
Aldermen, and to call to their assistance any of the 
Council." 

The first Charter to Philadelphia, as a City, was 
that granted by William Penn on the 25th of Octo- 
ber, 1 70 1, and its preamble calls the place "this town 
of Philadelphia;" and he thereby erected "said town 
and boi'oiigJi of Philadelphia into a City." That 
Charter remaining in force, the City of Philadelphia 
was recognized in establishing the basis of Legisla- 
tive representation, by the Constitution of 1776. It 
was replaced by the Charter of i ith of March, 1789, 
and this was in like manner recognized by the State 
Constitution of 2d of September of 1790, and the 
Constitution of 22d of February, 1838. The Charter 
of 1789 and its supplements continued in force until 



J 2 CONS OLID A TION. 

modified and extended by the Act of Consolidation ; 
and the area was but the two square miles until so 
extended. 

That Charter of the City might be endured in its 
simplicity while its population was small, with its 
improvements, works, and police in the same propor- 
tion ; when its hundred or less watchmen sufficed for 
an orderly people ; when its streets were lighted with 
oil, and it had not begun its water-works, or had 
them upon the smallest scale, with wooden pipes,— 
but, when the City and Districts grew to nearly half 
a million, and the latter were yet rapidly growing, 
and together they were more populous than many 
of our States, a Constitution more fitted to the re- 
quirements of a Commonwealth, in the character and 
number of its provisions, became a necessity, in the 
minds of those who looked into the future of Phila- 
delphia. Thus had been its population : 



1753 
1760 
1769 
1790 
1800 



14,563^ 
18,756 
28,043 . 
28,522 
41,220 

53J22 



CITY AND COUNTY. 



According to Dr. 
Mease's statement. 

Do. U. S. Census. 
81,005 
111,210 



1820 
1830 
1840 
1850 
i860 
1870 



63,802 
80,458 

93>665 
121,376 



CITY AND 
COUNTY. 



137,097 
188,961 
258,037 
409,045 
565,529 
674,022 



The growing disparity, between the City of two 
square miles and the residue of the County, is 
apparent from the above table of populations ; and 
every year it would but increase, by the conversion 
of dwellings into warehouses and stores, within the 
former, thus ultimately to give all the increase of 
population outside the City, while the same fixed 



OLD CHARTERS. 1 3 

limits would restrict the City from any territorial ex- 
tension of the basis of taxation. In time Philadelphia 
would be outside the City, as the great London is 
outside of the little City of London. This was an 
instance of English resistance of change, partaking 
the character of Chinese fixedness, not to be imitated 
by progressive Americans, who always feel them- 
selves competent to change their laws and Consti- 
tutions as may be required by the change of cir- 
cumstances, without danger to the vested rights of 
property, or the stability of government. 



CHAPTER II. 

MEASURES THAT PRECEDED AND PRODUCED CONSOLI- 
DATION. 

As the town extended beyond the City bounds, 
adjoining corporate Districts were formed by the 
Legislature for the government of their local affairs, 
until these greatly exceeded the area and population 
of the parent city. These Districts were incorporated 
in the following order: Southwark, the 26th of March, 
1762; The Northern Liberties, the 9th of March, 
1 771; Moyamensing, the 24th of March, 181 2; 
Spring Garden, the 22d of March, 1813; Kensing- 
ton, the 6th of March, 1820; Penn, the 28th of P'eb- 
ruary, 1 844;. Richmond, the 27th of February, 1847; 
West Philadelphia, the 3d of April, 1851 ; Belmont, 
the 14th of April, 1853. From these different juris- 
dictions many inconveniences arose, and immunity 
was given to crime. For nearly ten years before the 
remedy was attained a number of influential citizens 
sought a reform. A Town Meeting was called for 
November i6th, 1849, by the following persons: 

John Swift, Chapman Biddle, 

Josiah Randall, Henry A. Beck, 

Clement C. Biddle, William West, 

A. M. Prevost, , L. Johnson, 

William Rawle, Mahlon Gillingham, 

Garrick Mallerv, Thomas Finley, 

(14) 



PRE PARA TIONS. 



15 



John Cadwalader, 
William S. Charnley, 
G. G. Westcott, 
David Paul Brown, 
Benjamin Mifflin, 
Francis Wharton, 
Samuel H. Perkins, 
Jacob Carrigan, Jr., 
Jno. M, Kennedy, 
James Durnell, 
Jacob Freas, 
Edwin R. Cope, 
John W, Kester, 
David Boyd, 
George W, Tryon, 
Jno. M. Ogden, 
P. P. Morris, 
M. Myers, 
Thomas McGrath, 
Thomas Bradford, 
F. Stoever, 
Jno. Leadbeater, 
George C. Naphes, 
John G. Brenner, 
William G. Cochran, 
Jno. H. Dohnert, 
C. L. Ingram, 
Henry M. Watts, 
William Elder, 
Henry D. Gilpin, 
A. Boyd Hamilton, 
Henry S. Patterson, 
Henry Horn, 
George H. Earle, 
James Laws, 



George W. Biddle, 
Jacob Snider, Jr., 
Theodore Cuyler, 
B. Arthur Mitchell, 
St. George T. Campbell, 
William L. Hirst, 
Benjamin Stiles, 
Eli K. Price, 
John Naglee, 
Andrew Miller, 
William H. Smith, 
William White, 
Jacob Esher, 
James Magee, 
Jno. H. Campbell, 
George W. Fai:r, 
E. S. Jones, 
T. M. Pettit, 
J. B. Sutherland, 
Samuel Barton, 
Daniel Smith, Sr,, 
William McGlensey, 
W. C. Parker, 
B. H. Brewster, 
Peter Ambruster, 
William R. Dickerson, 
Jno. M. Coleman, 
Peter Fritz, 
James Harper, 
E. P. Middleton, 
Thomas Sparks, 
George K. Childs, 
Harry Connelly, 
Passmore Williamson. 



An Executive Committee was appointed by a 
general meeting of the Citizens, and continued by 

50, to wit: 



another such meeting m 

o 



1 6 CONS OLID A TION. 

John Cadwalader, Josiah Randall, 

Eli K. Price, William L. Hirst, 

Gideon G. Westcott, Henry M. Watts, 

Charles L. Ingram, John H. Dohnert, 

John M, Read, John M. Kennedy, 

John M. Coleman, Edward A. Penniman, 

Henry L. Benner, Jacob F. Hoeckley, 

John M. Ogden, Thomas S. Smith, 

Francis Tiernan, Peter Williamson, 

William White, Alexander Cmnmings, 

George W. Tryon, Jacob Esher, 

Job R. Tyson, Christopher Fallon, 

John G. Brenner, Michael Pray. 

Chief Justice John M. Read had collected and 
pubHshed the statistics of the City, Districts, and 
County, their taxables, assessed values, indebted- 
ness, dates of incorporation, etc., and was an early 
and sincere friend of the cause. 

The Committee addressed a Memorial to the Leg- 
islature of 1 85 1. Among other things it says: 

" Uninfluenced by either personal or political bias, 
and prompted by a sense of the public welfare only, 
this Committee, composed of men of all parties, earn- 
estly commend this measure to the favorable action 
of the Legislature." 

" That the disastrous and destructive mobs of 
1844 developed the necessity of a more united and 
efficient Police than then existed in the city and dis- 
tricts of Philadelphia, and, in November of that year, 
a Town Meeting of citizens favorable to consolidat- 
ing the city and districts into a single city was held, 
at which meeting resolutions in favor of the measure 
were passed. A committee being appointed to draft 
a bill, discharged their duty ; submitted the bill pre- 



PREPARA TIONS. I y 

pared by them to a subsequent Town Meeting, where 
it was adopted and ordered to be presented to the 
Legislature." 

The Committee had, in September, 1850, addressed 
notes to the candidates of the different pohtical par- 
ties for. the Legislature. Some gave unqualifiedly 
favorable responses; others with the qualification that 
a vote of the people should be taken on the question. 

John Cadwalader and Eli K. Price were sent to 
Harrisburg to represent the evils under which our 
community suffered, and to advocate the passage of a 
Consolidation bill. The members of both branches 
of the Legislature, generally, met them in the Hall of 
the Representatives, and gave them a respectful hear- 
ing, but no legislation on that subject then ensued. It 
was a step in preparation for the future. Judge Cad- 
walader was then and always a true and able advocate 
for consolidation. 

Late in the spring of 1853 a number of influential 
citizens met at the Exchange to devise means to check 
the disorders occasioned by the volunteer Fire Com- 
panies, and in favor of a paid Fire Department. They 
perceived no remedy short of stringent legislation. 
There were present Stephen Colwell, Frederick 
Fraley, William Welsh, Horace Binney, Jr., William 
L. Rehn, Peter McCall, James Page, M. W. Baldwin, 
Wm. V. Pettit, Thomas S. Newlin, Job R. Tyson, 
Jos. B. Townsend, Daniel M. Fox, Saml. V. Merrick, 
John Miller, John Farnum, Wm. P. Jenks, Joshua L. 
Hallowell, S. D. Anderson, Henry Farnum, H. L. 
Benner, John T. Smith, Saml. Megargee, Isaac P. 
Morris, Eli K. Price. 



I g CONS OLID A TION. 

That Committee insisted that EH K. Price should 
make the sacrifice to represent the City in the Senate, 
and Horace Binney, Jr., brought to him the following 
letter from his father, which clearly sets forth the evils 
that were felt to exist by himself and the thought- 
ful and patriotic citizens of Philadelphia, and the 
necessary means of obtaining success. Mr. Binney 
had deliberated well and long before he came to his 
conclusion; but the intolerable evils overcame the 
natural aversion to change, and he saw that nothing 
less than consolidation would afford an adequate cure 
of our ills. 

" My dear Horace,— I regard all the objects of 
local and immediate interest, at this time in thq City, 
as much more intimately connected by intrinsic rela- 
tions than they are by mere cotemporaneousness. 
The fire department, the groggery system, the venal 
selection of candidates for office by bargains, express 
or implied, for the benefit of the wire-workers, and 
the tax collection system, all act upon, and are acted 
upon by each other. Those, therefore, who are of 
the same mind as to one or two of these may very 
properly unite in the reform ticket with those who 
are more interested in the other subjects. Their 
combined force is necessary to gain the end proposed, 
and there is nothing in the success of a part of the 
measures desired that can make the others less likely 
to succeed in the end, or aggravate present evils of 
any kind. I incline to think that the objects all hang 
together, and must fail or succeed together. I myself 
take more interest in the suppression of some of the 



PREPARA TIONS. I ^ 

mischiefs referred td than in the suppression of the 
others ; but I am willing to unite with all who desire 
reform in any of them, and in the choice of respecta- 
ble men, whose fair judgment and efforts will be 
given to reform in all of them. I have come to the 
opinion that we must have a united power through 
all the parts of our City and districts to make any of 
these reforms attainable ; and therefore although in 
the beginning I opposed what is called consolidation, 
and both wrote and spoke against it, and still think 
that it will have its specific evils or inconveniences, 
yet its highly probable effect will be to put down 
certain very gross abuses of recent years, and there- 
fore I no longer oppose it. Indeed, in some respects, 
the grounds of my opposition have become obsolete. 
That has already happened in the City which I feared 
consolidation would bring about ; and consolidation, 
under a good charter, may now tend to prevent 
further progress in the same bad course. 

'' I am not, however, very sanguine, but surrender 
all my objections for the sake of union in the objects 
I have mentioned. 

*' Unless we succeed, the whole and all its parts 
will become remarkable for the evils they will show 
rather than for any good. 

" To succeed in such an effort as is now making, 
it is indispensable that men of undoubted and estab- 
lished weight in the City should not only give their 
names and votes, but their services, and some portion 
of their personal convenience and comfort, to the 
furtherance of the common purpose. Your object is 
a highly respectable list of candidates for the State 



20 CONSOLIDA TION. 

Legislature, and you cannot succeed without it. Re- 
spectable names in the general sense will not answer. 
They must be so in all senses. There must be a 
weight in the ticket sufficient to counterpoise a great 
deal of bad combination, and to crush a good^ deal 
of corrupt intrigue. The ticket must be one, in fine, 
that will test the virtue of the City, and ascertain 
whether there is enough in it to be capable of restora- 
tion. I believe there is, and that a proper ticket will 
find it out, and bring it out. 

" Some of the names of candidates you have men- 
tioned to me are excellent. They are men who are 
named for the occasion, to help the City, not to help 
members, nor to help their party or personal friends. 
" I should think your battle would be half won if 
you could place Eli K. Price's name, with his consent, 
at the head of your list. 

"His name is a pledge already given, and not 
likely to be forfeited, for qualities specially necessary 
at such a time and on such an occasion, — experience 
in civil affairs, general knowledge, talents, integrity, 
moral courage, constancy, and conscientiousness. He 
has, moreover, great practicalness and facility that 
enable him to impress other minds with his own con- 
victions. If the election shall be gained in the City, 
the cause is to be won in the Legislature, — and to be 
won by appeals to reason, to practical good sense, 
and to moral principles, in the representatives from 
the country. I dare say the post may be inconvenient 
to him ; but my opinion of him is, and always has 
been, that if he is satisfied that it is his duty, or even 
that old friends, the friends at the same time of public 



PREPARA TIONS. 2 1 

order and morality, think it is his duty, he will make 
the sacrifice; and he is a man who will be the happier 
afterwards for having made it. You are at liberty to 
tell him all this from me. If hd' thinks of me as I do 
of him, I do not believe it will do you any harm. He 
will at least consider it carefully, and not suffer any 
slight objection to hold him back from what is so 
important to the cause. Please to remember what I 
tell you, that your ticket must be such that men of 
virtue in the City will say at once that all the objects 
desired by the mission of such men must be good, 
and of the first importance to the City; and then they 
will sustain it in spite of existing combination. 
"Affectionately yours, 

** Horace Binney. 
" H. Binney, Jr., Esq. 

" South Fourth Street, 23 June, 1853." 

Mr. Binney, Jr., brought this letter to Mr. Price, 
and left it, as intended for him, and at the same time 
expressed his own views in a very impressive manner, 
concluding them with the solemn remark, " You are 
now in the hands of God and the people, and they 
look to you to perform this duty." Mr. Price had 
said to a sub-committee that he would as lieve they 
had asked him to strike off an arm; but such appeals 
from his highly valued fellow-citizens, and his own 
abiding sense of the great evils to be remedied, caused 
him to surrender his own inclinations, and to make 
the demanded sacrifice. 

But Mr. Price consented to run only on condition 
that all the reformers should go with him for the 



22 CONSOLIDATION. 

Consolidation of the City and district corporations; a 
measure of which he had been an advocate for several 
years. The friends of the demanded reforms then met 
in a nominating Convention, and on the 30th of July, 
1853, nominated Eli K. Price for the Senate, and 
Matthias W. Baldwin and William C. Patterson for 
the House of Representatives. Mr. Price expressed 
in the following letter the terms of his acceptance of 
the nomination. In convention Jos. B. Townsend 
read the following letter from Eli K. Price: 

" Gentlemen, — It is with sincere regret that I find 
myself appealed to by citizens, whose opinion is 
authoritative with me, to allow my name to be used 
as a candidate for the Senate of Pennsylvania. A 
private station has been the chosen purpose of my 
life, from which I expected no influence could ever 
move me, and I can only leave it at large sacrifice to 
my business and my happiness. Were I sure of a 
defeat, it would be an easy task and welcome duty 
thus to manifest, at so cheap a cost, a willingness to 
aid the great and good measures you have in view ; 
and I should esteem it incomparably more honorable 
to fail under your nomination than to attain a triumph 
that would pledge me to the perpetuation of existing 
evils. Against these, indeed, I should wish with the 
smallest minority, or even standing alone, to make 
my solemn protest, and at least obtain an exculpa- 
tion from a participation in their continuance. But I 
cannot doubt that the body of our fellow-citizens, if 
sufficiently unfettered by party trammels, would desire 
the reform of existing abuses, and would will their 



PR EPA RA TIONS. 2 3 

correction. They must feel them to be dangerous to 
the peace and prosperity of our community, and to 
the purity and permanence of our pohtical institutions. 
There is a deep-seated, painful, and pervading con- 
viction that there has long existed, and yet exists, a 
disloyalty to the principles of our republican govern- 
ment, that if not checked and corrected by the virtue 
of the people must prove fatal to it; and the patriotic 
bosom is wounded and incensed in the belief that 
much bad legislation is from year to year produced 
and good prevented by other influences than a single 
regard to the public welfare. It w^ill be for the people 
to determine whether they will now apply the needed 
remedy or leave abuses to ripen for a day of severer 
retribution. 

'^The exercise of the elective franchise has become 
almost valueless, since the citizens are under a com- 
pulsion to vote for those whom they do not approve, 
or vote not at all. In the inceptive movement of 
ward meetings to choose delegates to nominate can- 
didates for the votes of the people, the active force 
usually consists of office-holders and office-seekers 
and their adherents ; the delegates nominate to please 
those who send them into the nominating convention; 
and thus the public servants virtually perpetuate their 
own power, and become the public masters; and 
when the people appeal to the Legislature for a re- 
dress of grievances, they are taunted with the ques- 
tion, How many delegates can you send to the Con- 
ference ? If you are part of the working machinery 
of part}^, you may expect there to be favorably heard; 
but if only quiet and unobtrusive citizens, anxiously 



24 - CONSOLIDA TION. 

concerned to secure the peace, welfare, and reputation 
of the community, it implies great simplicity to ex- 
pect, at your solicitation, a redress of aggravated evils. 
''Thus, in the comparatively small matter of the 
compensation for the collection of the taxes, every 
effort for a change for years past has been abortive, 
because the collectors and their friends can manage 
to send enough delegates to the nominating body to 
decide who shall be the candidates for the Legislature, 
and /M/- chosen representatives will not alter the law 
to allow the people to pay their own taxes to a gen- 
eral receiver, and thus retain and save to themselves 
the five per cent, on the taxes now paid to the col- 
lectors. 

''And likewise in respect to the subject which has 
claimed your special attention, the evils resulting from 
the present means of extinguishing fires, appeal has 
been made in vain for legislative correction. Those 
who become Legislators by the mere operations of 
party machinery, moved for selfish ends either ex- 
pressed or implied, cannot afford to risk the loss of the 
support of a few thousand firemen, forgetting that a 
majority of these must, as good citizens, also lament 
existing evils, and would not be averse to their re- 
form. These cannot but know and feel that our 
community and its prosperity suffer irreparable dis- 
grace and injuries by the disorders, riots, and blood- 
shed incident to our plan of putting out fires, and 
that they owe a paramount obligation to the public 
welfare and the maintenance of the authority of the 
law. They must know and feel that our form of 
government must fail in its purposes if every citizen 



PR EPA RA TIONS. 2 5 

cannot know that he has a legal right to be protected 
from the dangers of fire as well as to be secure in his 
person and property from the attacks of the midnight 
robber, beyond the possibility of a denial from the 
neglect or caprice of volunteers, under no legal obli- 
gation or compulsion to serve him. It is true, the 
zeal and energetic service of the firemen have not 
often been withheld, but it has repeatedly happened 
that the well-disposed have been prevented by the 
disorderly and wicked from extinguishing fires, to the 
heavy loss of the county and the burthen of the 
tax-payers. 

"Again, we have a system of tavern-licensing that, 
in its unlimited permission to all to become vendors 
of liquors, has produced a fearful increase of intem- 
perance ; and, in the numbers engaged, arrays a for- 
midable body of citizens against its reform. The 
revenues so readily paid for licenses can never begin 
to compensate for the ruin of the good constitutions 
of thousands of otherwise useful and valuable citi- 
zens ; nor to provide for the increased burthen of 
taxation resulting from the consequent pauperism, 
misery and crime, much less to repair the loss to the 
community and families from the idleness and inabil- 
ity to labor, begotten by depraved appetites for strong 
drink. The public good demands a correction of 
this evil that cannot be expected from representatives 
who look upon it and its adherents as an element of 
support. With his face set towards a correction of, 
the terrible evils of intemperance, no well-wisher of 
his fellow beings would wish or dare to stop so long 
as there shall be curable evils that can be reached by 
B 3 



26 CONS OLID A TION. 

the power of the law, wisely and constitutionally 
enacted. 

" But the hope of being the instrument of good in 
the correction of the evils and abuses to which I 
have referred, is not alone the moving motive with 
me. There is another measure upon which the pub- 
lic opinion, after years of discussion, is now mature 
for action, and which heretofore has found its chief 
resistance in the party influences before noticed. As 
a means of the correction of some of the evils re- 
ferred to, it is the only efficient remedy, and cannot 
but be productive, when fully accomplished, of great 
and enduring public good. Philadelphia has become 
a great and is a rapidly-increasing community ; but 
her many municipal corporations are the cause of 
feebleness and many disorders. The power and 
prosperity of the whole are neutralized by conflicting 
sectional interests, jealousies and hostilities. The 
parent city has often evinced an illiberal policy to- 
wards her surrounding children, which they have 
more than requited by a spirit of retaliation ; and the 
latter, often too feeble to cope with their own dis- 
orderly and riotous citizens, yet could they not brook 
her intervention without a deadly hostility. But 
bring them all under one municipal government, in 
which all will be equally and fairly represented, and 
that according to their differing political party com- 
plexion, then all conflicting views will be discussed 
and peaceably settled in the same council chambers, 
and every portion of the great metropolis will be 
equally cared for and equally benefitted by all mea- 
sures adopted for the common welfare. Then the 



PRE PAR A TIONS. 2/ 

jealousy and hatred that provoke to hostihty must 
cease, and the power of the whole will be pledged 
for the maintenance of the good order and peace of 
the whole. By the expansion of the limits of the 
city, the basis of her taxable resources and wealth 
will be increased, to go on enhancing in value through 
the future of time, and to accelerate her commercial, 
manufacturing, and social prosperity and happiness. 
Philadelphia will then stand out in bold relief as one 
great city, instead of an agglomeration of incongru- 
ous municipalities, and stand in her just proportions, 
strength, and beauty, in comparison with the other 
great cities of the world. One impulse, one heart, and 
one pulsation will equally pervade and give life and 
power to the whole, and no member of the same body 
can rise in hostility to it; while no jealousy would be 
felt, if in the overflowing prosperity of trade some of 
its depots should be located beyond the present nar- 
row limits of the city proper, or if in a wise foresight 
public squares or parks should be provided for the 
health and enjoyment of the people, beyond the 
limits of the present built town, especially when it is 
considered that in future the citizens doing business 
within the two square miles will be generally resi- 
dents beyond them. Philadelphia would then em- 
brace her own Girard College grounds, Fairmount 
and Lemon Hill, and improve them for the benefit 
of her own citizens. 

" The appeal made by you to me, presents for my 
decision these considerations : First, that my name 
may sustain a defeat, but this would cost me nothing 
in feeling, and would be personally a great relief. 



28 CONS OLID A TION. 

Second, that it may succeed, and if so would be an 
irresistible demonstration of the public will that the 
reforms and change of municipal government, I have 
adverted to, should be accomplished. — With such a 
hope and promise before me, I have felt, under the 
closest scrutiny that can be taken of my duty, that I 
dare not refuse the call you have made upon me to 
make a sacrifice for the general good. I will, how- 
ever, take no part to promote my election, but if your 
ticket shall succeed, will, with God's help, faithfully 
serve the people for all measures designed for their 
good, and' the repression of all evils that do them 
harm. 

" But I make this concession upon the condition 
that the highest intelligence and virtue to be found 
in the community, shall be exerted for the accomp- 
lishment of its own work of reform. Bills required 
to carry out their proposed measures must demand 
great care, time, and circumspection in their prepara- 
tion. The interests at stake are large and moment- 
ous, though the principles that must govern, will not 
be difficult to understand or apply. To delay the 
preparation of the bills until the meeting of the 
Legislature will be to lose the session,' or to do the 
work crudely and unwisely. The most capable men 
of differing political parties should unite in preparing 
the bills, and obtain for them such a professional 
sanction, by eminent lawyers, as will command the 
confidence of the people and of the Legislature. 
These will require to be assured that no vested rights 
of property shall be invaded, no trust diverted from 
its purpose, or risked in the change or modification 



PREPARA TIONS. 



29 



of the powers of the trustees ; that no provision of 
our Constitutions shall be violated. To bills thus 
prepared and sanctioned, I would give my humble 
advocacy. To any specific form, measure or extent 
of relief or change, I now make no such pledge as 
will forestal discussion, or preclude the adoption of 
the results of the invited labors of the citizens in the 
preparation of bills, or of their further discussion in 
the Legislature. I cannot doubt they would be such 
as to stand the test of time, and that a practical trial 
of them would but test the wisdom of the framers, 
and that they would promote and establish the en- 
during welfare, prosperity, and happiness of this great 
community. 

" Eli K. Price. 
" To Stephen Colwell, Chairman, and other con- 
ferees. 

"July 30th, 1853. 

"Mr. Binney, Jr., moved the following resolution: 

''Resolved, That the Committee on the Address be 
continued, with power to take order upon it and on 
its publication, and on the publication of any other 
documents intended to promote the success of the 
object of this Convention. 

*' Mr. Morris moved that a Committee of Finance 
be appointed, consisting of three members of the Con- 
ference, and that the chair appoint the committee; 
which was unanimously agreed to. 

"The chair appointed as Finance Committee, 
Thomas S. Newlin, Isaac P. Morris, William L. 
Rehn. 

3* 



30 



CONSOLIDA TION. 



'* On motion, adjourned to meet again at the call 
of the chair. 

"Stephen Colwell, CJiairinan. 
" J. B. TowNSEND, Secretary y 

A City paper contained the following : 
" The following is a copy of the letter from the 
Hon. Richard Rush to Eli K. Price, Esq. The letter, 
as the contents of it will show, was called forth by 
the recent excellent letter of Mr. Price to the Con- 
vention of the friends of the Paid Fire Department. 
The contrast which Mr. Rush presents of Philadel- 
phia as it once was, the foremost city in the Union, 
and the fact that it has been so far outstripped as to 
be only the third city in the Union, is forcibly ex- 
hibited. The causes are worthy of every citizen's 
consideration : 

" ' Sydenham, near Philadelphia, 
" ' August I, 1853. 

" ' My dear Sir, — I have just read in this morning's 
Ledger your letter of the 30th July about Philadel- 
phia, and cannot refrain from giving you my thanks. 
A native of the city, though much away from it, I 
have too often since returning to an ancient home, 
here in its vicinity, deplored our falling off from 
former days. I left Philadelphia in i8ii,then the 
first city of the Union in v/ealth, numbers and busi- 
ness — as always in natural advantages. We stood 
first before the Revolution, during the Revolution, 
and many years after the Revolution and formation 
of the Federal Constitution. Getting back after a 
long absence, and eager to indulge in the fond parti- 



PREFA RA TIONS. 3 1 

ality of the native, I was met by the woeful fact of 
our being only the third city, and that we were con- 
tinuing to lose ground — our natural advantages being 
the same as ever, with the new developments of our 
matchless mineral wealth all superadded. I could 
only account for this by supposing that we must 
have fallen off in the wisdom suited to the times, 
whilst our rivals were alive to it ; they active, we 
sleeping. Mr. Tyson's excellent letters to the late 
British Consul were well calculated to stir up anew 
our Philadelphia pride and hopes. Since their ap- 
pearance I do not remember to have seen anything 
which has so forcibly brought into one view some of 
the operative causes of our decline, as your letter. 
I say decline, because, although we may all witness 
with pleasure recent indications of revival in our 
noble old city of " Independence," not to go forward 
in line with our rivals in this quick age, is, in effect, 
to decline. We are still a good way behind, where 
we shall remain, and get relatively worse, if we do 
not fully awake up to our true condition. It is, there- 
fore, that, as one individual of this community, I 
desire to convey to you my poor, but sincere acknowl- 
edgments for your frank, manly, well-timed, sterling 
letter. In such feelings as these, I beg to subscribe 
myself, with great respect, 

" * Your very thankful fellow-citizen, 

" ' Richard Rush. 
" * To Eli K. Price, Esq.' " 

The North American and United States Gazette, the 
Public Ledger, the Daily Register, the Evening Bidletin, 



32 



CONSOLWA TION. 



the Gennantoivn Telegraph, and the Sunday Mciritry 
opened their columns to communications and wrote 
editorials advocating Consolidation, inclusive of legis- 
lation to put the Fire Companies under the control 
of the Councils and the Courts. William F. Grayson 
and Mr. Birney were active and efficient writers and 
advocates. Eli K. Price was elected to the Senate 
for three years, and M. W. Baldwin and William C. 
Patterson to the House, pledged to the measure of 
Consolidation, by independent voters, who left their 
party attachments and discipline. 

As soon as the election was over Mr. Price caused 
to be called together many of the active friends of the 
reforms, to meet all the members elect of the Legis- 
lature for the City and County, at the Exchange, to 
frame a bill for the New Charter of the City of Phila- 
delphia. Among those actively engaged upon this 
work, for several weeks meeting twice a week, were 
Morton McMichael (Chairman), Frederick Fraley, 
John K. Kane, John M. Ogden, John Cadwalader, 
William L. Hirst, Philip M. Price, Daniel M. Fox, 
Horace Binney, Jr., Henry M. Phillips, Alexander 
Cummings, Thomas S. Smith, William V. Pettit, 
Thomas S. Newlin, Andrew Miller, Henry M. Watts, 
Philip R. Freas, William H. Stokes, George G. West, 
N. B. Browne, James A. Campbell, James Page, 
Samuel H. Perkins, Samuel V. Merrick, John M. 
Kennedy, William S. Price, James Veree, John H. 
Dohnert, Peter McCall, Jacob F. Hoeckley, George 
W. Biddle, Peter A. Keyser, Isaac Shallcross, George 
Northrop, Michael Pray, John Robbins, Stephen Col- 
well, Isaac Hazlehurst, Henry L. Benner, John Deal. 



PREPARA TIONS. 3 3 

William L. Hirst, Frederick Fraley, and Eli K. 
Price were made a committee to revise and amend 
the bill laid before the General Committee. Messrs. 
Hirst and Fraley rendered very important services in 
putting in shape their own views and those of their 
fellow-members of the Committee ; and Mr. Hirst 
exerted an important influence as Chairman of the 
State Executive Committee of the Democratic party, 
and in collecting the statistics and in preparing the 
memorial to the Legislature. 

The members of the Legislature invited to a 
conference were : City Senators, W. A. Crabb, Eli K. 
Price ; County Senators, S. G. Hamilton, W. Good- 
win, Levi Foulkrod ; City Representatives, William C. 
Patterson, M. W. Baldwin, George H. Hart, Henry 
K. Strong ; County Representatives, Thomas Mander- 
field, R. M. Carlisle, George W. Hillier, John J. 
Boyd, R. B. Knight, Isaac W. Moore, Richardson L. 
Wright, E. Poulson, J. H. Hurtt, Benjamin R. Miller, 
Joshua S. Fletcher. 

The Sunday Merciiry said of the Committee : 

"The committee appointed by the citizens of Phila- 
delphia and the surrounding Districts, to frame a bill 
to present to the next Legislature, by which Consoli- 
dation might be effected, have at last adjourned sine 
die. A more intelligent or liberal-minded body of 
men could not be brought together for any purpose. 
At great personal sacrifices, the different gentlemen 
composing the committee, discharged faithfully the 
duties they had assumed. For months they hkve 
held weekly meetings for the purpose of discussing 
calmly and carefully every section of the bill. The 

B* 



34 CONSOLIDA TION. 

expenses of the whole proceeding — which have not 
been hght — the members defrayed out of their pock- 
ets or used their own personal influence with their 
friends to raise a fund. Whatever may be the fate 
of the bill, the public are satisfied of one fact, that in 
its preparation the intelligence, experience, and learn- 
ing of the county have been engaged." 

And the Gennantown Telcgrapli, of December 28th, 
1853, said : 

" The Executive Committee having in charge the 
preparation of the bill to be submitted to the Legis- 
lature, providing for the Consolidation of the city and 
county of Philadelphia into one municipality, con- 
cluded its labors on the 20th inst, after a session of 
two months, and the bill is now being transcribed, 
and will, we presume, be published as soon as it can 
be got ready. This Committee, composed of some 
of the ablest and most respectable citizens of the city 
and county, numbering between fifty and sixty, held 
two long sessions a week, and the Sub-Committee an 
equal number, and zealously labored from the begin- 
ning to the end, with the view of preparing the bill, 
embracing so many important and distinct objects, 
with all the care and accuracy that it was possible to 
bestow upon it, in order that it should protect the in- 
terests and meet the reasonable demands of every 
portion of the enlarged city. And they have suc- 
ceeded — if our judgment is worth anything in deter- 
mining the measure of success — succeeded to the 
satisfaction of every impartial person, who will take 
the trouble of fully investigating and weighing the 
question in all its parts and bearings, and the very 



PR EPA R A TIONS. • 3 5 

delicate and intricate duty the Executive Committee 
had to perform." 

While the Bill for consolidation was in progress 
Mr. Price wrote articles for the papers advocating its 
provisions and passage, and sent copies to influential 
persons elected to the Legislature, through the State, 
to prepare them for its adoption; and many editorials 
were also published. These are not here given, 
because the substance of them is embraced in the 
report made by Mr. Price to the Senate from the 
Committee of City members. 



CHAPTER III. 

THE PASSAGE OF THE ACT OF CONSOLIDATION. 

The Bill was presented immediately after the 
organization of the Senate, January 3d, 1854, and 
printed, accompanied by a printed memorial from the 
Committee, setting forth our local statistics, and the 
grounds upon which consolidation was demanded. 
Among other things in this memorial it is said, — 

** The same population with the same interests, on 
the same plot of ground, and forming to the eye of 
the stranger the second great city in America, ought 
unquestionably to have the same government, the 
same laws, and the same police. This is the clear 
right of its citizens ; and the Legislature, for their 
sake, and for the general interests of the State at 
large, should at once place all its inhabitants under 
the charge of one Municipal Corporation, obliterating 
by a single act of its power those artificial distinctions 
which have produced all the evils of conflicting juris- 
dictions and prejudices, and at one period led to the 
shedding of blood, and the practical imposition of a 
voluntary martial law. 

*' It appears, therefore, that sound policy dictates 
that the whole of Philadelphia should be united under 
one municipal government, with an executive head, 
(3^) 



FASSING THE ACT. 



37 



to be called a Mayor, whilst the Legislative power 
should be vested in a -Select and Common Council, 
elected by the respective wards, and not by a general 
ticket, so that all parties may be represented accord- 
ing to their numbers. 

**At present, including the County, the Guardians 
of the Poor, the Comptrollers of Public Schools, and 
five suburban Boroughs, there are nineteen distinct 
Corporations, with that number of distinct set of 
taxes, collected by distinct sets of Tax-collectors, and 
with at least twelve distinct debts. 

" This change will secure only one set of ordinances 
for the government and regulation of the good people 
of Philadelphia, easily learned and known by all, in- 
stead of distinct codes of municipal laws, varying 
according to the prejudices and passions of each 
Municipality, and really inaccessible to the citizen. 

"The same corporate unity dispenses with a multi- 
tude of Treasurers, Solicitors, Clerks, Superintendents, 
or their equivalent, besides hosts of subordinates. It 
dispenses with one hundred and sixty-eight Tax- 
collectors, and will cause a saving in this item alone 
of one hundred thousand dollars per year. 

" It creates, instead of numerous different sets of 
debts of varying value and uncertain credit, one con- 
solidated city debt of the same value and undoubted 
credit, and replaces at least twelve different sets of 
books by one set kept in the simplest form. 

" Your memorialists will not enter into an analysis 
or explanation of the provisions of the bill herewith 
submitted. They speak for themselves. It is believed 
that they comprehend every subject necessary to be 

4 



3 8 CONS OLID A TION. 

considered by the Legislature in providing for Con- 
solidation." 

Before the Bill was reported a deputation was sent 
by influential citizens to ask a reconsideration of the 
measure ; and a Committee of Firemen to deprecate 
action bearing upon them; but without inducing any 
change of purpose in the Consolidation Senator and 
Representatives. 

The Bill, reported January lOth, was considered 
in Committee of the Whole. Mr. Price made an 
argument in its favor; and on the i8th it was passed 
by the Senate, upon a call of the yeas and nays, 
iinauivioiisly. 

While the Bill was pending in the House an 
opposition arose in the City Councils, in shape of the 
expression of an apprehension that the City trusts 
might be endangered. The following action ensued : 

*' Consolidation Committee. — A special meeting of 
this body was held on Friday afternoon, January 20th, 
1854, pursuant to a published call. 

" Morton McMichael, Esq., presided. 

" Mr. Hirst, Chairman of the Sub-committee which 
prepared the bill now pending in the Legislature, said 
t4iat the committee assembled under peculiarly grati- 
fying circumstances. The bill matured here had been 
passed by the State Senate with a promptness and 
unanimity hitherto unparalleled. It had been printed 
and laid on the tables of members on Saturday, and 
was passed on the following Wednesday without a 
dissenting voice. And what was perhaps not less 
remarkable, though of unusual length, and embracing 
a vast number of sections, it had been copied by the 



PASSING THE ACT. 3p 

industry of the transcribing clerks, and presented to 
the House on the following morning. Mr. Hirst 
then submitted the following resolutions, which were 
unanimously adopted : 

''Resolved, That this Committee on behalf of their 
constituents, the citizens of Philadelphia, tender to 
the members of the Senate of Pennsylvania their 
grateful thanks for their prompt and decisive action 
upon the Consolidation Bill, and hail the unanimity 
of the vote as a cherished proof that our brethren 
throughout the State will unite with us on all meas- 
ures calculated to promote the prosperity, greatness, 
and good government of Philadelphia. 

''Resolved, That this Committee do most respect- 
fully and earnestly entreat the members of the House 
of Representatives to concur in the result of the 
deliberations of the Senate with like spirit and una- 
nimity, and to clear away all obstacles to the imme- 
diate consideration and final passage of the Bill, thus 
affording to our citizens abundant time and oppor- 
tunity to prepare and adapt themselves to their new 
municipal condition. 

"Resolved, That the members of the House of 
Representatives from the City and County of Phila- 
delphia are respectfully and most urgently solicited 
to facilitate the bill through the Committee of which 
they are the members, and to report the same to the 
House without any delay ; that we feel certain that 
in the expression of this wish we are supported by, 
and truly represent, the earnest desires of the great 
mass of our citizens, who will look upon any obstruc- 
tion placed in the way of the immediate passage of 



40 CONSOLIDA TION. 

the bill as mischievous and inimical to the interests 
of the people of Philadelphia. 

''Resolved, That copies of the above resolutions be 
addressed by the President and Secretary to each 
member of the Senate and House of Representatives. 

''Resolved, That the President and Secretary be 
requested to tender the thanks of the Committee to 
Messrs. Henershotz, Weiser, Blair, and Stehley, the 
Transcribing Clerks of the Senate, for their praise- 
worthy promptness in engrossing the bill in time for 
presentation to the House of Representatives the 
next morning after it passed the Senate. 

"Resolved, That the members of this Committee 
already appointed by the chair for that purpose, be 
requested to visit Harrisburg, and on behalf of the 
whole Committee, to personally urge upon the mem- 
bers of the Legislature the merits of this great 
measure, the necessity of the immediate passage of 
the bill, and its importance to the interests of the 
city and the Commonwealth. 

" Mr. Fraley said — I am surprised at the action of 
the Councils last evening. Up to the present time I 
have felt as though I was engaged in a work which 
would effect great public good, and a work that my 
fellow-citizens of all parties united in for the simple 
benefit of the public generally. The bill was prepared 
with peculiar care and deliberation, the local and 
technical knowledge which has been brought before 
the Legislature in the shape it has, is worthy of the 
prompt action of that body. The members of the 
Senate, who have relied on the acts of the Committee, 
have without any amendment passed the bill as made 



PASSING THE ACT. 4 1 

by us. The bill was subjected to a larger circle of 
criticism than any other bill which has ever been 
brought before the Legislature. It was framed, and 
published before the Committee took any final action 
upon it. Various amendments were made, which 
this body deemed necessary, so as to effectually make 
the bill a law, and place our city on a level she should 
occupy, so as to compete with other cities of the 
Union. I regret that the City Councils, after passing 
resolutions with great unanimity approving of the 
bill as framed by this Committee, should, at their 
meeting on Thursday evening, doubt that the trusts 
of the city would be properly cared for. 

" I think that the actions of the Councils are unad- 
vised, and I fear that this action on their part will be 
viewed as a demonstration of the Whig party of 
Philadelphia to oppose the passage of the bill. But, 
sir, I am satisfied that such an inference would be 
erroneous. I am happy to concur with the Demo- 
cratic party in this measure, and I think it has been 
brought before Councils by some office-holders who 
hold offices by the patronage of the Whig party, and 
fear they may be abolished or filled by other incum- 
bents, 

"As a member of the Whig party I have felt it my 
duty to cheerfully throw aside all party considerations, 
and during the last twenty years my mind has been 
impressed with the subject of the Consolidation of 
the City and Districts, and no matter how it might 
affect the political interests, a question of so great 
and so vital importance should make party questions 
subordinate to the public good. I think, sir, when 

4* 



42 CONS OLID A TION. 

the members of Councils come to their second sober 
thoughts, they will recall their action of last evening, 
as they certainly must be cognizant of the fact that 
nine-tenths of the citizens of Philadelphia desire the 
passage of this bill, well knowing that the trusts 
endowed by liberal citizens will be preserved invio- 
late. 

" Mr. H. Binney, Jr., thought that the resolutions 
of Councils were eminently superfluous in expressing 
a .doubt that the interests of the city would suffer. 
Whatever doubts they may have had relative to the 
bill, there is no section of it more perfect than that 
relative to trusts. 

" Why, sir, the trusts will protect themselves, for 
the Legislature can do nothing to impair them in 
any shape or form. If they needed protection, they 
have received it in the best and simplest manner. 
The Consolidation Bill makes the city fully as much 
the Trustee of these trusts as the present organization 
now acts in the premises. I consider, sir, the meas- 
ures embraced in this bill, on this subject, are 
perfect. 

" It seems strange to me that the Councils have 
thought of the interests of the city at the eleventh 
hour; certainly they could not suppose that the gen- 
tlemen of this Committee would overlook measures 
of such vast importance, and the very simplicity of 
the bill should satisfy the mind of any one who reads 
it, that full justice has been done the city. 

" The bounty of Girard, the charity of Scott, to- 
gether with all benevolent donations entrusted to the 
care of the city, will be fully as safe under the acts 



PASSING THE ACT. .^ 

of this bill as they now are, and he who thinks to the 
contrary is guilty of weakness. 

"I hope, sir, the attention of the members of 
the House of Representatives and Senate will be 
awakened to the interests of our city, and this bill, 
as it emanated from the Committee, be passed. 

" The great secret of the actions of the Councils 
last evening, obviously is to delay, and by that delay 
peril the bill on the eve of its final passage. 

" Mr. Kennedy— Mr. President, as a citizen of the 
District of Northern Liberties, I refer with pride to 
the resolutions passed by the Commissioners of that 
District a few evenings since. While I honor them 
for the bold stand taken, I equally regret the uncalled 
for action of Councils last evening. 

" Colonel Page— Sir, there are times when it be- 
comes every honest man to look to the general good 
and throw aside politics. I am pleased, sir, to stand 
in this place and say that no action has been taken 
by the Democratic party to oppose this bill. Northern 
Liberties, the cradle of Democracy, has sent its po- 
tential voice up in favor of Consolidation. So also 
has Moyamensing, and everywhere that the Demo- 
cratic party has spoken through its organizations, a 
large majority has been found in favor of Consoli- 
dation. 

*'The people generally are in favor of this bill, and 
the opposition arises from mere selfish principles, and 
springs only from office-holders, who have a personal 
interest in the result. The benefit of this bill will be 
past comprehension, and as one, I feel no party ad- 
hesion ; no personal or individual motives should 



44 CONSOLIDA TION. 

prevent its passage. I hope, sir, this bill may pass 
the House, be signed by the Governor, and go into 
effect, as has been very appropriately suggested, on 
the 22d of February next ; for, certain is it, that it 
will bring peace, order, and good government over 
half a million of people. I am cordially in favor of 
the bill, and I regret in common with the gentlemen 
who have preceded me that Councils, after seeing the 
actions and labors of this committee, and having been 
afforded the most ample opportunity of inspecting 
the bill, should at this late day appoint committees 
to see that the interests of the City are taken care of. 
I earnestly hope, sir, that all who raise objections to 
this bill, may live to be disappointed. 

" Mr. Watts— Mr. President, with other gentle- 
men I have seen with regret the action of Councils, 
who have heretofore expressed satisfaction of the 
proceedings of this body, and I cannot now see why 
they should express doubts as to the trusts of the 
city. Should hesitation be brought to bear on the 
members of the Legislature as to the passage of this 
bill, it is my opinion that the member of the Legis- 
lature who dare in any material respect to alter this 
bill, assumes a responsibility that few men are bold 
enough to undertake. I do not wish to disparage 
the industry, capacity, or fidelity of any of the mem- 
bers of the Legislature ; but I do declare that, if I 
stood in the position of those gentlemen, I would not 
dare to dot an i or cross a / in any portion of that 
bill. I mean so great has been the intelligence and 
assiduity of the Committee, and so great has been 
the technical skill employed, and so much care hav- 



PASSING THE ACT. 



45 



ing been bestowed on each provision of the bill, can- 
not affect disadvantageously the interests of the city. 

" As a representative of the citizens of this Com- 
monwealth, I would bow with deference to the will 
universally expressed by our Courts, Grand Juries, 
and the will of the people so universally expressed. 

" Mr. William L. Hirst said that he did not by any 
means consider the bill in danger; and, if he could 
do so, he would regard the experiment of representa- 
tive government as a failure. There was but one 
part of the bill which could give rise to a political 
feeling, and that was the division of the city into 
wards. And on this point he desired to say that if 
the boundaries fixed by the bill should be disturbed 
by amendments, it would be a violation of all pro- 
priety. In this Committee there had been a general 
yielding of political considerations, and the division 
into wards had been made especially in such a man- 
ner as to avoid political difficulties. He said further, 
that the accounts he received from Harrisburg were 
to the effect that the House of Representatives was 
prepared to be as prompt and unanimous in its action 
on the bill as the Senate had been. He would not 
believe that there was any danger of the failure of 
the bill, and he knew there was not the slightest 
reason for apprehension, if the members from the 
city and county were true to the obligations they 
owed to those who had elevated them to power. 

" Mr. Andrew Miller concurred fully in all that 
had been said. The legal gentleman who had re- 
vised that portion of the bill relating to the trusts 
was one in whose hands he would entrust his life 



46 CONSOLIDA TION. 

with perfect confidence. Mr. Miller said, in addition, 
that though the boundaries of all the wards were not 
such as he had desired and urged, he had cheerfully 
acquiesced in the general decision on the subject, and 
he hoped all others would do the same. 

** Mr. George Northrop agreed with Mr. Watts 
that the object of Councils making their last move- 
ment was not stated in the resolution which they had 
adopted. He explained that in the matter of the 
trusts, no law consolidating the city could impair 
them, inasmuch as the corporations were merely 
trustees, standing in the same relation as in individ- 
ual trustees. If the individual trustee were changed, 
as sometimes became a matter of necessity, and as 
was done by legal authority, it did not in any man- 
ner affect the trust itself So, if a trust were vested 
in one of our municipal corporations, it could not be 
destroyed by the mere act of consolidating tlie city, 
but passed into the hands of the new corporation 
which legally was created to take the place of the 
old one. Eminent legal counsel had been consulted 
by the Committee on this very subject, who had given 
the opinion that the bill in nowise affects the trusts. 
In fact, as Mr. Binney had said, the' trusts protect 
themselves. This opinion, he remarked, was given by 
one who had been the counsel of the city corporation. 

*'Mr. McMichael said — Gentlemen, as your Chair- 
man, I have not had an opportunity in the debates, 
and, although I have had considerable experience in 
deliberative bodies, yet I have seldom listened to dis- 
cussions participated in by men of such high attain- 
ments. I have never known of anything being so 



PASSING THE ACT. 



47 



thoroughly discussed, nor yet have I known of a 
body of men confining themselves to the point, as 
has been done in the two months' deliberations of 
this body. Experience, combined with practical 
sense, has been adduced : and I have taken great 
pleasure, apart from my personal interest, in listening 
to the debates. The giving up, all round, of personal 
prejudices, was eminently praiseworthy. I think that 
the members of this body possess as much intelli- 
gence, and quite as much honesty, as the members of 
Councils." 

On the 30th of January, 1854, the Bill passed the 
House, after slight and unimportant amendments, by 
a vote of 79 yeas against 3 nays. On the 31st, the 
amendments were concurred in by the Senate ; and 
on the 1st of February the Bill was compared, and in 
the evening sent to the Governor. Governor Bigler 
was then at Erie, owing to the Railroad War between 
that City and the Railroad Companies. There was 
urgent necessity that the Bill should become a law 
without delay, to put an end to the legal powers of 
the District corporations to contract debts, as they 
were beset to make Railroad Loans, and some of them 
were tempted to incur debts for local advantages 
which they would not have done if they should have 
the debts to pay, but were quite willing and eager to 
incur them when they knew that the Consolidation 
Law would throw the obligation of payment on the 
large City. William^ C. Patterson therefore went with 
the Assistant Secretary of State and the Bill to Erie, 
and procured the signature of the Governor, whereby 
it became a law on the 2d of February, 1854; they 



48 CONS OLID A TION. 

having been in the cars from the evening of the pre- 
ceding day, and having called the Governor from his 
bed before midnight of the day of its date to sign the 
Bill; which he was enabled to do at once, since he had 
been acquainted with the purposes of the Bill before 
leaving Harrisburg, and also felt the necessity of 
prompt action. 



CHAPTER IV. 

GROUNDS PRESENTED FOR THE PASSAGE OF THE ACT. 

Mr. Price, as Chairman, presented the following 
to the Senate : 

" The Select Committee of the Senators from the 
City and County of Philadelphia respectfully report: 

'• That the bill referred to them entitled ' An Act 
further to amend an act entitled an act to incorporate 
the city of Philadelphia,' has claimed their careful 
consideration, and they recommend its enactment 
into a law. For more than ten years the subject of 
extending the limits of the city of Philadelphia has 
engaged the attention of our constituents, successive 
bills have been framed by citizens of distinguished 
intelligence and ability, and the bill now reported is 
the result of their deliberations after full discussion 
and mature consideration. The measure has from 
year to year increased in public favor, until the people 
hav^e become so nearly unanimous as to silence pub- 
lic opposition. This unanimity of feeling is not now 
to be distrusted as a popular impulse that is unsafe 
for legislative action. It has encountered the long 
continued opposition of the interested by office and 
power to oppose it, and of these who apprehend dan- 
ger in all advancements and changes, and by obstruc- 
tion and time has gathered resistless strength. This 
c 5 ( 49 ) 



50 CONSOLIDA TION. 

continued discussion and long lapse of time, waiting 
for and obtaining the slow acquiescence of the cautious 
and wary, who now see in the measure the only effect- 
ual relief against intolerable evils, afford the desired 
assurance of a safe and prudent legislation — of legis- 
lation that shall be the expression of wisdom and 
justice as well as of power. 

"The municipalities of Philadelphia have received, 
at various periods since the revolution, the deputed 
powers of the Commonwealth, variously expressed 
and limited in their different charters. They were 
the free gift of the sovereign power to subserve the 
public welfare, more especially, it is true, as respects 
the people therein inhabiting, but also as regards the 
citizens and important interests of the State. Those 
powers were conferred because there are many local 
improvements and laws demanded for the well-being 
of large towns, that are not required for the sparse 
population of the country. Those delegated powers 
are but a trust to be exercised for and in behalf of 
the Commonwealth, through agencies more inces- 
santly active and prompt of execution than the ordi- 
nary course of administrative justice, or of distant 
and but occasional legislation. They partake not of 
the nature of a contract, incurring as such constitu- 
tional inhibition against a repeal, but that of a depu- 
tation or agency subject to revocation. Those powers, 
therefore, which the Legislature has conferred only 
for the public good, the same authority may withdraw 
or modify when the public good shall require it; and 
the duty thus to do in such emergency is the same 
that induced their original delegation. But it follows 



ARGUMENT THEREFOR. cj 

not that by the dissolution of a charter or its modifi- 
cation, any change can be made in the rights of prop- 
erty. The change of a trustee or a modification of 
his powers works no change in the beneficial owner- 
ship. By the principles of everlasting justice as well 
as the guaranties of our constitutions, the rights of 
property cannot be impaired, and when held in trust 
it must be preserved for the uses to which it has been 
devoted. The bill now reported, in abundant caution 
expressly declares that all trust estates shall be held 
by the city of Philadelphia upon the same uses, trusts, 
and limitations upon which they are now held. Nor 
is the identity and continuity of the old city charter 
severed or touched, but only modified with extended 
boundaries. 

"The present limits of the city of Philadelphia re- 
main as they were fixed by the founder nearly two 
centuries since, containing two square miles. They 
have known no expansion or retraction, but, as upon 
the Procrustean bed, all things upon the city plot have 
been made to conform to the contracted space, until 
it may be naturally apprehended that the mind and 
energies of her citizens have been, in a degree, 
cramped and fettered by their narrow bounds for 
scope and enterprise. While nearly all other cities 
of our continent have been allowed freedom of ex- 
pansion, and have bounded forward in population, 
and wealth, the city of Philadelphia had fallen, in 
1850, from the first to the second in wealth, and the 
fourth in population. Had she, from time to time, 
as the town extended, annexed territory, her growth 
would have been natural, and the system of gov- 



S2 



CONSOLIDA TION. 



ernment been preserved simple and uniform, with an 
ever increasing strength. But the accretions round 
the city have been independent corporations, nour- 
ished by her strength and created by the overflow of 
her population and wealth, until the nine district 
municipalities, formed upon the original nucleus, ex- 
ceed in population the parent city. The city, by the 
census of 1850, was in population one hundred and 
twenty-one thousand four hundred and seventeen, 
and of the city and county four hundred and nine 
thousand and forty-five. New York was five hundred 
and fifteen thousand five hundred and forty-seven, 
Baltimore one hundred and sixty-nine thousand and 
fifty-four, Boston one hundred and thirty-six thousand 
eight hundred and eighty-one, and by this time Cin- 
cinnati and New Orleans, then but a few thousand 
less than the city proper of Philadelphia, have gone 
ahead of her. 

'' It is not to be supposed of human nature that the 
people of these many separate local governments 
have not been actuated by a preference and zeal for 
their separate interests, nor that collisions and hostile 
feelings have not arisen obstructive to a concert of 
measures for the common welfare. With no para- 
mount or pervasive power of legislation or control, 
no laws, uniformly operative over the whole, could 
be adopted or executed beyond the respective bounds 
of each. Rioters suppressed within one jurisdiction 
take refuge and find impunity within another. Meas- 
ures of public improvement, by the city or respec- 
tive districts, are arrested at each extreme of their 
narrow limits ; and works erected competent to sup- 



ARGUMENT THEREFOR. 53' 

ply the wants of all with but slight additional ex- 
pense, are curtailed of their usefulness, and other 
works at large expense uselessly erected by other 
corporations. The varying laws of so many localities 
in close contiguity, are so numerous and little known, 
that the citizens, in their hourly movements, are sub- 
jected to legal obligations and powers of which they 
have no knowledge. These divisions and unseen 
lines and complication of powers, are potential alike 
to paralyze or arrest every effort to advance the com- 
mon welfare and to suppress general evils. 

" Partial efforts have been made for co-operation 
between the city and districts, which have resulted 
in good not unmixed with evil. They have produced 
bodies that are irregular excrescences upon a bad and 
disjointed system, but the necessary shifts to avert 
greater mischiefs. We have ' County Commissioners,' 
in number and powers corresponding with those of 
other counties, but with affairs to manage of so much 
greater magnitude as to require a * County Board,' 
composed of the members of the Legislature, to be 
a check upon them, and to assume the responsibilities 
of fixing the rate of taxation, making appropriations, 
etc. We have a board of ' Guardians of the Poor,' 
whose members are appointed by the city and dis- 
tricts, invested with an independent power to levy 
taxes, and, beyond the supervision and control of the 
appointing power, to check expenditures or correct 
abuses. We have a 'Board of Health' appointed in 
like manner, in receipt of head-money from emigrants, 
and beyond supervision and control. We have the 
* Port Wardens/ the master appointed by the Gov- 

5* 



54 CONSOLIDATION. 

ernor, and thirteen assistants appointed by the city, 
Commissioners of certain districts and the Borough 
of Bridesburg-, who have control without accounta- 
bih'ty, of matters that seriously concern important 
commercial interests. We have num.erous ' Direct- 
ors of Public Schools' appointed by the city and dis- 
tricts and elected by the people in the townships, and 
the Directors choose a ' Board of Controllers,' and the 
latter have indirect taxing powers, and are accounta- 
ble to no supervising authority. We have, more- 
over, a ' Board of Police,' composed of the presidents 
of the City Councils and District Commissioners, and 
of the Police Marshal, the latter elected by the people 
and subject to no direct control by any other body. 
We have besides these a ' Board of Prison Inspectors,' 
appointed by the courts and mayor, recorder and 
aldermen, without the supervision or control of any 
superior authority. Thus we have ten corporations 
or separate organized bodies, mostly emanating from 
the ten municipal corporations, overlapping and inter- 
twined with them, and exercising each a share of the 
local government in and about Philadelphia, the ex- 
tent of whose powers and doings are generally un- 
known to the citizens, who, when they -perform their 
duty of paying their taxes, know little of the manner 
or purpose of their expenditure, or of the fidelity of 
their public servants in the disbursement of them. 
It is true, there are in all these bodies many valuable 
public-spirited citizens serving the community with- 
out compensation, but for whose faithfulness and 
integrity such an incongruous accumulation of func- 
tionaries could not have been so long endured with- 



ARG UMENT THEREFOR. 



55 



out a liability to that supervision and correction of 
abuses which is needful in every department of re- 
publican government. The bill now reported, brings 
all those bodies, so far as retained, subject to the 
supervision of the City Councils for the correction of 
all malpractices. Their members, too, are generally 
made elective by the people, who will yearly have the 
opportunity of a new selection, and of omitting such 
as may have been exceptionable in conduct. 

"Add to the ten municipal corporations, the County 
Commissioners and the ten enumerated excrescent 
bodies, adjunct and helpful by reason of the restricted 
limits and infirm.ities of the eleven, and we have 
twenty-one governing bodies in the city and districts 
of Philadelphia ; and add to these the six boroughs, 
and thirteen townships, and the sum of the whole is 
forty corporate, or quasi-corporate bodies, to govern 
the people and manage the public affairs of the 
smallest county in the State ; and with the help of 
them all it is undoubtedly the worst governed, from 
the number of limited territorial divisions and incon- 
gruous powers and conflicting interests of these 
various governing and executive institutions, 

" When it is considered how many are the function- 
aries and persons employed in and under all the 
enumerated corporate bodies, and in the collection of 
the taxes, it cannot be a matter of surprise that the 
purpose of consolidation has been long resisted, 
baffled, and delayed. But the people, with a united 
voice and irresistible strength, have demanded a 
sino-le crovernment of more extended rule, that shall 
have greater power to subserve the public good. 



5 6 CONSOL IDA TION. 

To the Legislature of the Commonwealth they make 
their appeal for relief, and ask that form of govern- 
ment that properly appertains to the community in- 
habiting one large city, with the same large commer- 
cial, manufacturing, and social interests ; a single 
government, that shall produce fraternal feelings, 
harmonious action, advancing alike the welfare and 
prosperity of the wdiole and every part. They make 
this appeal hopefully and confidently, in the full con- 
viction that the Legislature will not refuse what the 
welfare and happiness of any portion of the Com- 
monwealth requires. Philadelphia, though cramped, 
fettered, and paralyzed by a pernicious and compli- 
cated system of government, is an important portion 
of the State. She is part and parcel of Pennsylvania, 
to whom the State owes the duty of furnishing a good 
government. She is the only great seaport of the. 
State, that transacts the commerce between the ocean 
and the interior, not only of the State but of the Con- 
tinent. And with her rightful dimensions, though 
the smallest county, she contains nearly one fifth of 
the population and more than one-fourth of the taxa- 
ble wealth of the Commonwealth, Add to this the 
outlying lands of her citizens, the capital moving and 
afloat of her merchants, their shipping at home and 
abroad, their merchandise and debts of customers, 
and you have an aggregate of wealth that cannot be 
readily told. For the protection of these large inter- 
ests, for the prosperity and happiness of her people, 
she claims the benignant and kindly consideration of 
the Commonwealth, not as to strangers, not as to a 
portion of the State having distinct or opposing in- 



ARGUMENT THEREFOR. 57 

terests, but as a part, and not an unimportant part, 
of the great State of Pennsylvania, as Kiw^ in feeling 
and one in interest with the whole body of their 
fellow-citizens, having the same government to sus- 
tain and defend. 

*' How much Philadelphia has outgrown and is 
outgrowing the city limits, and how much her popu- 
lation has overflown her boundaries, may be seen by 
the following tables: In 1850, three of the districts 
north of the city exceeded her population by over 
thirty thousand. In that year all the districts con- 
tained 238,12! inhabitants, and the city but 121,417; 
difference 117,704, or nearly double; and now they 
are more than double the city in population. 

"The increase of the city is but 29 ^^ per cent, in 
ten years, that of Spring Garden is 111% and of 
Kensington 109^. The city of Philadelphia is' no 
part of it in the centre of Philadelphia. Vine street, 
her northern boundary, is south of the centre of pop- 
ulation. There were in 1850 but 188,802 inhabitants 
between the rivers south of Vine street, while there 
were north of that street, between the two rivers, 
206,885 ; and in three and a half years that difference 
has greatly increased. The aggregate increase in ten 
years south of that line is but fifty-two per cent., 
while north of it the increase is nearly eighty-three 
per cent. 

" The valuations of real estate for taxation also 
show that the new districts are rapidly outstripping 
the city, and each successive year will increase the 
disparity of the ratio, as a widening circle extends 
the line of improvement. The city valuation in- 
c* 



58 



CONSOLIDA TION. 



creased in nine years fifteen and one-fourth per cent., 
while the average increase of the whole county was 
twenty-seven and five-sixths per cent., and the dis- 
tricts on the margin of the town, with room for new 
buildings, were above sixty-five and eighty-eight per 
cent, increase. And herein is apparent the future 
advantage to the whole city when enlarged, of those 
districts having large open space yet to be built 
upon; for though their surveys, grading, culverting, 
&c., may be expensive, they have a power to increase 
revenue for a long time to come, which in the present 
city and the Northern Liberties is nearly expended, 
by their plots being generally built up.. The future 
availability of the young and thrifty is more than 
compensatory for their present indebtedness and future 
occasion of expenditure. 



POPULATION. 


1840. 


1850. 


INCREASE. 




93,665 
27,548 

14,573 

1,594 


121,417 

38,799 

26,979 

1,607 


29^ per cent. 
41 nearly. 
85 /-'s P^''' t;ent. 
4-5 I clo. 


Southwark 


Moyamensing; 






Total south of Vine street. 


137,380 


188,802 


52 do. 


North ern Liberties 


34,474 
27,849 
22,314 

28,467 


47,223 
58,895 
46,776 

53,991 


37 dj. 
1 1 1 ^ do. 
109^ do. 

89% do. 


Kensington 

Residue of county north of 
city and east of Schuylkill. 


Total north of Vine street. 
West of Schuylkill 


113,104 

137,380 

7,553 


206,885 

188,802 

13,358 


82;.^ do. 
82;^ do. 




Total city and county 


258,037 


409,045 


^58^ do. 



"''" Aggregate. 



ARGUMENT THEREFOR. 



59 



''Taxable inliabitanis in 1853. — City, 22,024; South- 
wark, 8,193; Moyamensing, 6,153; Passyunk, 335, — 
total, 36,705. 

"Northern Liberties, 9,130; Spring Garden, 12,817; 
Kensington, 11,563; Penn, 2,658; boroughs and 
townships north of city, 11,332, — total, 43,496. 



VALUATION OF REAL 
ESTATE. 


1844. 


1853. 


INCREASE. 


City 


^57,708,858 

5,367,5^1 
2,323,210 
9,056,948 
9,149,604 
3,793,508 

12,893,513 


^66,497,465 
6,036,047 

3,838,791 

9,637,466 

15,128,817 

7,148,502 

19,931,570 




Southwark 


12;^ do. 
65;^ do. 
6K do. 
65 >/ do. 
88 1-5 do. 

54% do. 


Moyamensin-r 


Northern Liberties. . . 


Sprin£T Garden 


Ivensington 


Other districts, boroughs, 
and townships 




Total 


100,293,222 


128,218,658 


27 5-6 do. 





"It is apparent that by the double process of the 
growth of the town outside, in an ever-expanding 
circle, and the conversion of dwellings in the city 
into uninhabited stores and warehouses, the latter 
will become, as respects population, of subordinate 
importance, and the property of the wealthy, who 
shall retire outside the vortex of business, be left to 
the government of those who will own but a small 
proportion of it, if the present divisions be maintained. 
Such has been the process in London. There wealth 
and fashion have receded from the city as defined by 
its ancient walls, as if the contact with trade imputed 
vulgarity; and here, if no less worthy motive, the 
attractions of quietude, fresh air, health, and nature's 



6o CONSOLIDA riON. 

charms, will continue to accelerate the villa improve- 
ments that have begun to adorn West and North 
Philadelphia. It should not be that the city should 
sink to be an appendage to her own colonies, nor to 
stand in the sixth rank of American cities, when, by 
the enactment now recommended, she may instantly 
become the first in size, the largest in the number of 
well-built houses, of all the cities in the Union. If 
the surrounding habitations and people be not thus 
secured to the city, she will as inevitably sink in 
relative importance to the towns now rapidly grow- 
ing round her, as that the nations of Europe, within 
contracted territories, will dwindle in the comparison 
with the ever-swelling population and rising greatness 
of the North American republic. 

"In times past we have heard of objections to con- 
solidation that may, perhaps, be repeated. It is said 
that London and Paris are respectively small cities, 
around which other municipalities were formed like 
those round the city of Philadelphia, until the aggre- 
gate London and Paris became to be millions in 
population. And that is true. But let it be recol- 
lected that London and Paris have had their growth 
during a period commencing before the Christian 
era ; that they had no such elements of progress as 
are witnessed in the United States ; that they have 
been for nearly two thousand years the seats of two 
of the most powerful governments of the earth — 
governments sustained by immense standing armies ; 
and that the soldiery and police are an arm of the 
State, whose power pervades all parts and maintains 
the peace by an iron rule. No such power is present 



ARGUMENT THEREFOR. 6 1 

in Philadelphia. God grant it may never be. Happily 
our governments need no standing army; the people 
are their voluntary and best support. Yet in all large 
cities the elements of disorder and misrule lie in close 
and fermenting proximity, easily kindled and of ex- 
plosive power, and demanding a preparation and 
means of suppression as prompt and of unquestion- 
able efficiency. These means imply the necessity of 
a pervasive authority, as quick and far reaching in 
execution as the riot or tumult to be suppressed, and 
admitting of no border refuge to the violators of the 
law. These we must attain by a single head to direct, 
and an efficient chief of police with adequate force to 
execute ; and for these we provide by the bill for 
consolidation, without obstructive divisions and with 
exterior borders sufficiently remote to afford no place 
of lodgment within striking distance. To the govern- 
ment of the State we have not been accustomed to 
look for a police force to suppress the riots and dis- 
orders that arise in cities, until the crisis demands 
a large military power, but by deputed municipal 
powers to take the duty, expenses, and burthens 
thereof on the local community. This duty and 
these expenses and burthens this community are 
willing to do and to bear, but only ask from the com- 
mon legislature the legal means and facilities best 
adapted to the purposes of self-protection, for our 
peace, prosperity, and happiness. 

"Another objection, much more specious than solid, 
under which an appeal was made to patriotic feeling 
and the pride and principle of State rights, was raised 
by taking a comparison between the act of consolida- 

6 



62 CONSOLIDA TION. 

ting the districts and that of the States of the Union. 
There is no just parallel between the cases. The 
States, on the achievement of the revolution, became 
respectively independent sovereign nations, with orig- 
inal, inherent, and absolute power, for all purposes, 
the smallest and greatest. By the formation of the 
constitution of the United States, only a few specific 
powers for general objects were surrendered, and all 
others reserved to the States and the people thereof; 
and owing to this distribution of powers it is that we 
have derived the capacity of comprehending as a 
united nation the territory of an empire, without im- 
pairing the due strength of government in every part. 
Our municipal districts exercise but a deputed au- 
thority for local objects, such as paving and lighting 
the streets, watching and police, without any original 
or inherent rights as such corporations. That power 
that created them for good may revoke the delegated 
authority, when it fails of its object, or to reconfer it 
for a greater good ; and the creature, in such case, 
has no warrant to become heroic in defence of rights 
that were wholly derived from the creator of them. 
* Shall the work say of him that made it, He made 
me not?' Om' Magna Charta declares- it to be an 
inalienable and indefeasible right of the people to 
alter, reform, or abolish their government (Const. 
Art. 9, Sec. 2), the work of their creation, and may 
not their representatives, exercising their sovereign 
will, revoke for satisfactory cause their own delegated 
powers ? We have it recently declared by the 
Supreme Court of Pennsylvania that 'public corpo- 
rations are cities, counties, and townships, which are 



ARGUMENT TIJEREFOR. 63 

erected for political purposes. Their charter may be 
granted or repealed without the consent of the mem- 
bers, and their affairs are managed by public officers.' 
(Per Chief Justice Black, Sharpless vs. City.) And 
again, by the Supreme Court of the United States, that 
' if a charter be a mere grant of political power, if it 
create a civil institution, to be employed in the ad- 
ministration of the government, or if the funds be 
public property alone, and the government alone be 
interested in the management of them, the legislative 
power over such charter is not restrained by the con- 
stitution, but remai?zs unlimited! (Story on the Const. 
§ 1393, citing Dartmouth College vs. Woodward, 4 
Whea. 518; and see i Whar. 25.) 

" There is, however, one parallel between the his- 
tory of the confederated States and that of our mu- 
nicipalities that it may be useful to consider. While 
held together by the imperfect ligature of articles of 
compact, it was found by experience that even with 
the aid of the patriotic feeling of the revolution, 
their action w^as not consentaneous and uniform in 
support of that congress and commander-in-chief 
who, through many difficulties thereby aggravated, 
conducted them to victory and independence. It 
became a necessity to abandon the federative articles, 
to form a constitution, and to establish a government 
with its own direct and efficient powers, as absolute 
and far reaching as the purposes of the constitution 
required. The same paralyzing inefficiency exists 
among the city and districts to accomplish any ob- 
jects for the general security and advantage of the 
whole, without the permitted power to attempt a 



64 



CONSOLIDA riON. 



remedy by mutual compact. The Union was formed 
by a constitution established by the people ; the city 
charter was formed and can only be reformed by the 
legislative authority who granted it. The rights of 
the United States and of the State governments stand 
consistently together for different objects, but a city 
charter to cover the same limits cannot co-exist with 
the district corporations for the same objects. Phila- 
delphia is one community, one dense population, one 
town of houses standing together, and rapidly ad- 
vancing her streets and mural improvements upon 
the surrounding fields; in nature, character, purposes, 
and interests she is one community and should be 
one city, one consolidated city, and not many corpo- 
rations with many attendant satellites moving in ir- 
regular orbits of neutralizing influence and clashing 
in power. ^ 

"A further objection made to embracing the whole 
county in one city is, that if the city as thus enlarged 
should vote by general ticket, there would be a proba- 
bility that the members of the Legislature would 
generally be of one party, and give to the city an 
undue weight in the Assembly. The bill obviates 
this result by a clause, usual in the formation of new 
counties, continuing the present apportionment for 
the residue of this septennial term, which will be 
until 1857, and that thereafter representatives shall be 
elected in the city by separate election districts. In 
the formation of senatorial districts, it is, admitted, 
that neither the city of Philadelphia of two square 
miles, nor any county can be divided ; but the sena- 
tors are elected in successive years, and in a city 



ARGUMENT THEREFOR. 



65 



nearly balanced in respect to the relative strength of 
parties, it will undoubtedly happen that from tempo- 
rary causes, as the desire to carry particular measures, 
or general influences, or greater fitness or popularity 
of candidates, different parties will succeed in differ- 
ent years, and thus will senators be elected and be 
found at the same time in the Senate of opposing 
politics. Again, if by uniting the city and county in 
one senatorial district the number of senators at the 
next apportionment should be reduced to four, that 
would relatively be a gain to the rest of the Com- 
monwealth. 

" May then the city be divided into separate dis- 
tricts for the election of representatives ? The con- 
stitution is express in respect to the formation of 
senatorial districts that, 'Neither the city of Philadel- 
phia nor any county shall be divided in forming a 
district.' There is no such prohibition in respect 
to the election of representatives, and the express 
inhibition in the former case and its omission in the 
latter is an exclusion of it in the latter, otherwise it 
would have been inserted. The constitution directs 
no districts to be formed for the election of repre- 
sentatives, whether by counties or otherwise, nor that 
counties must be adjoining and must not be divided, 
which was necessary in respect to senators, because 
these being required to be from one-fourth to- one- 
third less in number than the representatives, de- 
manded a proportionately larger basis of representa- 
tion requiring counties to be added together, and 
consequently a check against contrivances for party 
advantage. The only duty prescribed in respect to 

6* 



55 CONSOLIDA TION. 

representatives is, * That the number of representa- 
tives shall be fixed by the legislature and apportioned 
among the city of Philadelphia and the several coun- 
ties, according to the number of taxable inhabitants in 
each.' There is no limitation upon their number but 
that of the taxable inhabitants, no direction to form or 
to omit to form election districts, nor to divide or not 
to divide any city or county in electing representatives. 
The whole purpose is to secure a rateable apporiwn- 
vicnt of the representatives to the number of taxable 
inhabitants, that an equal and just rule shall be ob- 
served throughout the Commonwealth, in respect to 
the city and counties relatively to each other. This 
purpose being secured, the requisition of the consti- 
tution is satisfied. This purpose is equally secured, 
whether the proper proportionate number for a city 
or county, adjusted by the prescribed rule, be elected 
by general ticket or by single districts. The number 
of representatives is directed to be apportioned among 
the city and counties ; but whether to be elected by 
one ticket for the whole, or separate for parts, is not 
said. It is not directed that the election shall be by 
the whole city or county, nor is it prohibited that 
proportionate parts shall not elect a- proportionate 
number of the representatives. It is all the same to 
the residue of the State, whether the enlarged city 
should elect fifteen representatives by general ticket 
or the same number in fifteen elective districts, except 
that in the latter case the party phalanx would be 
broken, and each party have its fair representation, 
and the latter is the result desired by the voters ask- 
ing to be incorporated, and that which will be most 



ARGUMENT THEREFOR. ^y 

acceptable to the citizens of the residue of the Com- 
monweakh. 

"The constitutions of 1790 and 1838 use the same 
language as to the apportionment of representatives 
among the city of Philadelphia and the several coun- 
ties, yet both had in view that the Legislature might 
form other elective districts than the entirety of any 
city or county. The third section of the former pre- 
scribes, that 'no person residing within any city, 
tozvn, or borough, which shall be entitled to a separate 
representation, shall be elected a member for any 
county; nor shall any person, residing without the 
limits of any such city, town, or borough, be elected a 
member therefor.' This distinctly declares that a 
city, town, or borough might have a separate repre- 
sentation from that of the county in which they were 
situated, and that consequently counties were not the 
only elective districts the Legislature could form, 
although bound to apportion the representation 
among the respective counties. The constitution of 
1838, it is true, wholly omits the clause last quoted. 
But it substitutes, in the previous clause of the same 
section, the word ' district ' for the words ' city and 
county ' in the former constitution, and thereby re- 
tains the intent that the elective districts to be formed 
may be other than those co-extensive with the bound- 
aries of a city or county. It does not require merely 
of the representative that he be qualified by a year's 
residence in the city or coimty for which he is to be 
chosen, but of the district in and for which he shall 
be chosen, showing clearly that such district might 
be different from the lines of a whole city or county. 



68 CON SO LI DA TION. 

" If the representation were required to be by each 
respective county and not otherwise, two or more 
counties could not be joined together to form a dis- 
trict, yet such has always been done, and that to'o 
when together voting for more than one representa- 
tive, thus making the two or more representatives 
chosen represent two or more counties as one dis- 
trict. 

" The construction of the Constitution of the United 
States, and the practice under it, will also illustrate 
the subject. By it, 'representatives shall be appor- 
tioned among the several States, according to their 
respective numbers.' It is silent whether they shall 
be elected in districts or by general ticket; and 
down to 1842 the acts of Congress, making the ap- 
portionment of representatives in Congress, were 
silent on the subject, and some States elected by gen- 
eral ticket and some by single districts, as their re- 
spective Legislatures enacted. The provision of the 
constitution was equally satisfied in either way. The 
act oC Congress of 1842 directed, in conformity with 
the spirit of the age, that each representative, in the 
respective States, should be elected by single district, 
composed of contiguous territory, and so the law 
and practice have continued since. 

" The Constitution of Pennsylvania also provides, 
that ' the Representatives shall be chosen annually 
by the citizens of the city of Philadelphia, and of 
each county respectively.' And do not the citizens 
of each county respectively elect the representatives 
thereof, whether they do so as one, or as several elec- 
tion districts? In cither case, no more nor no less 



ARGUMENT THEREFOR. 69 

than the citizens of the county elect the representa- 
tives thereof, and it does not affect the rateable ap- 
portionment which it is the object of the Constitution 
to secure, whether they be elected jointly or sepa- 
rately. It is further provided, that each county 
shall have at least one representative ; whence it is 
argued that a county cannot be divided into elective 
divisions. Certainly not where but one is to be 
elected ; but that clause can have no bearing upon 
the case of a city or county entitled to several repre- 
sentatives. The Constitution proceeds to say, * but 
no county erected shall be entitled to a separate 
representation, until a sufficient number of taxable 
inhabitants shall be contained within it, to entitle 
them to one representative, agreeably to the ratio 
w^hich shall then be established.' This only further 
shows, that county lines are not always to be the 
boundaries of elective districts, as between the coun- 
ties themselves ; but can have no bearing upon the 
question of separate elective districts within any city 
or county. It does not follow that because any city 
or county may elect in separate districts, that part of 
such city or county shall be added to another county, 
or part of another be added to it in forming the dis- 
tricts. It is only asked, that the city or county itself, 
no more no less, be thus divided; and against that, 
there is neither direction, express nor implied, much 
less any prohibition in the Constitution. 

" In construing the Constitution of Pennsylvania, 
we are not to forget its first line, ' The legislative 
power of this Commonwealth shall be vested in a 
General Assembly.' The legislative power is the 



^O CONSOLIDA TION. 

sovereign power ; the fullest, largest, highest power 
that man can exercise on earth. It is omnipotent, so 
far as man can exercise power over man, and is only 
restrained by the powers granted exclusively to the 
United States, or prohibited to the State by the Fed- 
eral or State Constitution. There is no prohibition 
in either against the election of representatives by 
single district. The Constitution directs the end to 
be attained; it leaves the means of attaining that end 
to the wisdom of the Legislature. The Constitution 
declares that representatives shall be apportioned 
among the several counties, but by what divisional 
districts they shall be elected, it does not declare, and 
does not prohibit the proposed mode. ' The Consti- 
tution allows to the Legislature every power it does 
not prohibit' (Per Ch. Justice Gibson in Norris vs. 
Chymer, 2 Barr, 285.) Congress has no powers but 
those conferred by the Constitution of the United 
States, being a government for limited purposes; but 
a State Legislature has all powers not prohibited by 
the Federal or State Constitution. (9 Rob. 411, Bo- 
zant vs. Campbell.) 

" Should, however, any doubt remain upon the 
mind of the Legislature of its ability to district the 
enlarged city for the next septennial period, there 
remain two views to afford relief from the suggested 
apprehension of an election by general ticket. An- 
other amendment of the Constitution may be made 
in 1855, after a resolution by two Legislatures, and 
it would be but to meet the wishes and demand of 
the people of the State, to have separate election dis- 
tricts for senators and representatives. In this re- 



ARGUMENT THEREFOR. ^I 

spect the sentiment of the people of the city and 
county of Philadelphia accords with the desire of the 
people of the residue of the Commonwealth. 

"Again, the 'city of Philadelphia,' as spoken of in 
the Constitution for election purposes, is a division 
of the State for apportionment of representatives of 
two square miles, neither more nor less ; and it would 
but conform to the letter and spirit of the Constitu- 
tion to enlarge the city boundaries, subject to the 
retention of the same limits, as a division for ap- 
portionment for both senators and representatives. 
William Penn, in 1682, surveyed the city on a plot 
covering two square miles, (i Proud, 243.) His 
charter to the city, of 1701, made 'the limits and 
bounds as it is laid out between Delaware and Schuyl- 
kill.' Although that charter had expired by the 
Revolution, the Constitution of Pennsylvania, of 
1776, recognized 'the city of Philadelphia' as entitled 
to a separate representation for members of the Gen- 
eral Assembly and of the Supreme Executive Council. 
In 1789 a new charter was granted by the Legislature 
to the city of Philadelphia, still of its former dimen- 
sions. The Constitution of Pennsylvania, adopted in 
1790, declared that the representatives should be 
•apportioned among the city of Philadelphia and the 
several counties, according to the number of taxable 
inhabitants in each ;' which are the words continued 
in the amended Constitution of 1838. The Consti- 
tution did then mean, and must continue to mean, 
that such section or division, for apportionment of 
representatives, should be between the rivers Dela- 
ware and Schuylkill and Vine and Cedar streets ; and 



^2 CONSOLIDATIO.W 

it can be no infraction thereof to continue a division 
for that purpose of the same size, although the city, 
for all other purposes, be enlarged to the size of the 
county. Under this view, the present city and county 
limits of Philadelphia may, it is believed, be con- 
tinued two divisions for apportionment of representa- 
tives, as heretofore, liable to sub-divisions into elec- 
tive districts, if the former position be correct, as 
regards members of the House of Representatives. 

^'' The city of Philadelphia of enlarged limits may 
be the same city, bearing the same name under an 
amended charter, as to corporate identity, but will 
not be the same division for apportionment of repre- 
sentatives intended by the Constitution, inasmuch as 
it will be a much larger section of the State. If the 
enlarged municipality were called the city and county 
QiPcnn, it could not be doubted that the city limits 
meant in the Constitution by the city of Philadelphia 
would be only the original two square miles ; and 
this cannot be less the case, by calling the enlarged 
city by the old name. The present city was a sepa- 
rate representative and senatorial division in the 
county of Philadelphia, forbidden to be divided as to 
senators, but not as to representatives', and the Con- 
stitution cannot be invaded, by adhering to the same 
limits in apportioning the representation, although 
the other parts of the county are to be also embraced 
in the corporate limits and called the city of Phila- 
delphia. If the two square miles were incorporated 
under the name of the Q:\\.yo{ Delaware, and the residue 
of the county as the city of Philadelphia, the former, 
and not the latter, must remain the intended constitu- 



ARGUMENT THEREFOR. 



73 



tional division. It is the geographical space and the 
people therein inhabiting, and not the name, that 
would establish the identity of the representative 
division, for this is what was in view when the Con- 
stitution was formed. 

" The question of the extent of the limits of the 
enlarged city, as one principally affecting the citizens 
within the proposed boundaries, has claimed their 
own serious consideration. To take into the city but 
the present city and districts, would leave the two 
extremes of the county disconnected, and impose 
upon their inhabitants the necessity of joining con- 
tiguous counties; of seeking justice at distant county 
seats in the reverse direction from their ordinary calls 
from home, and of leaving those records which have 
preserved the muniments of their titles from the set- 
tlement of the province. The more vigilant pursuit 
of offenders, by the city police, would drive violators 
o{ the law to seek shelter or make their depredations 
outside the city, or thence make depredatory visits 
into it to the injury of peaceable citizens on both 
sides the border. With the rapid progress made in 
building, such an enlargement would have soon to be 
repeated by further annexations, for between Phila- 
delphia and Frankford, Germantown, Roxborough, 
and Hestonville, there is already a continuous build- 
ing connection. These considerations have had a 
decisive influence with the next contiguous boroughs 
and townships, to produce a willingness to come 
within the city bounds ; and in a diminished degree 
the same influence has extended to the outer town- 
ships. But it is only necessary to look at the small 
D 7 



74 



CONSOLIDA TTON. 



number of the inhabitants of the latter, to make it 
apparent that it is not unreasonable to put them to a 
choice of suffering themselves to be embraced by the 
new limits of the city or of joining other counties. 
They are less than five thousand taxable inhabitants 
out of nearly eighty-seven thousand. Shall the du- 
plicate county machinery of county commissioners, 
treasurer, county board, &c., be kept up at great 
expense and disadvantage to retain so comparatively 
small a number? They would be parted with in re- 
gret, but a proper economy and duty would require 
the sacrifice, were it their choice not to be incorpo- 
rated in the city. 

*'The large body of citizens, including some from 
every section who framed the bill, were unanimous 
in their vote to embrace the whole county, and time 
and explanation, it is believed, have reconciled many 
who were at first opposed to the including of the 
upper townships. The bill h^s been framed in a 
spirit of kindness and conciliation towards them. 
They are allowed wards with less than the average 
number of taxable inhabitants; they are not to be 
taxed for purposes that relate exclusively to the built 
portion of the city; their representatives in Councils 
are to share equally in the patronage with those of 
every other ward, while whatever general advantages 
shall be derived from the measure of consolidation, will 
equally result to them, nay, will be enhanced to them, 
as the impulse thereby, to be given to the growth of 
the town, will rapidly spread it upon the rural terri- 
tory, and convert the fields into city building lots. 

" To say that property generally will not be en- 



ARG UMEN T THEREFO R, 



75 



hanced in value by the proposed change, other cir- 
cumstances remaining the same, is not to speak the 
language of a sound and practical judgment. With 
a single and simple form of government, and one 
efficient police, to replace many, and works of im- 
provement to subserve all sections, with but a slight 
increase of expense compared with the service per- 
formed, should reduce expenditures and taxes ; with 
united action, and the concentrated intelligence and 
energy of the whole community, all enterprise must 
be better directed and more efficient ; by the economy 
of general means, directed to common ends, money 
will be saved, and better adapted measures to pro- 
mote manufacturing industry, and to facilitate and 
retain trade, profit, and capital will be increased, and 
these all produce demand for the sites of business 
and dwellings, and increase of the means of paying 
for them ; and thus by the double operation of in- 
crease of demand, and of increase of money, price 
will rise. To say the contrary of this, is to contra- 
dict all experience and an inevitable law of political 
economy. 

" While the whole will be benefited by the general 
measures to result from consolidation, there is no 
partial injury to result to any portion. Considered 
in respect to the burthen of existing debts, and a 
future liability to taxation, no section will have a just 
ground to complain of any other. To notice first the 
city proper, its property and resources exceed in value 
its debt; it imposes no burthen on any other portion. 
The district of the Northern Liberties is in like con- 
dition, and imposes no burthen on any other. But 



;6 



CONS OLID A TION. 



the city and the Northern Liberties have nearly buih 
up all their territory, and have no room for growth. 
Their capital expended in improvement must now be 
largely spent in other sections, and go to contribute 
to the growth and taxable resources of those portions 
now in a less favorable financial condition. It is this 
room and capacity for growth that make these worth 
to the enlarged city more than their present indebted- 
ness. They have a future availability that makes 
their acquisition a profitable investment at the cost 
of their liabilities ; they afford a basis for taxation 
and power, which they are too weak of themselves 
advantageously to develop, but indispensable as the 
foundation of a great city. When brought within 
the city limits and city government, capital will be 
more freely invested in a better character of buildings 
than now obtains in outside sections. This will call 
for surveys, grading, culverting, &c., by a present out- 
lay of moneys, but to be abundantly repaid in the 
future revenue. It will be a process of mutual benefit. 
The strength, the credit, and prestige of the city will 
be extended for the present help of those who alone 
could but feebly and slowly achieve their growth, 
but soon to be repaid with increase of wealth and 
power. 

** Through consolidation, Philadelphia city and 
county will achieve an improved mode of collecting 
the taxes, that will save to the tax-payers about one 
hundred thousand dollars per annum. The system 
established by this bill will also insure a much earlier 
collection, for the advantage of the finances and credit 
of both the city and the State. 



ARGUMENT THEREFOR. y-j 

"In establishing- an organic change^ forced upon 
us by the over-growth of the original limits for nearly 
a century, it is, perhaps, not to be expected that the 
Committee should notice the effect upon the existing 
political parties. It is a measure demanded, irrespec- 
tive of party, by all political parties; for all parties 
see in its consummation the public good; and every 
party knows that if it resist a measure for the gen- 
eral good, when demanded by the popular voice, it 
must suffer loss. But happily this is a measure that 
will result to the injury of no party that does not 
resist it, and will make all parties subserve the general 
welfare. With elections by separate districts or 
wards, each section will be represented in the city 
and State Legislature according to the political com- 
plexion of the local constituency. The State repre- 
sentation will be divided between the parties, as it 
now is ; and the city representation will be divided 
as the City Councils and District Commissioners now 
are not. Instead of City Councils all of one party, 
and District Commissioners nearly so, exposed to the 
temptations of opportunity and impunity, members 
of opposing parties will always be present to watch 
and check each other, and, with fuller informiation, 
discuss and decide every question, with a closer re- 
gard to what may be required by the public good; 
for by that test must each answer to a watchful com- 
munity, and hope to command approval and obtain 
strength. 

"Judging by the results of the elections for mem- 
bers of the Assembly and for county officers, the two 
great political parties, when the Whigs and Natives 



78 



CONSOLIDA TION. 



•act together as one, will approach an equality; and 
the ward divisions will show that result in City Coun- 
cils. Which shall predominate at any time will 
probably depend upon the fact which shall present 
the best men to the choice of the electors, and pursue 
those measures they most approve; and should either 
fail in these respects, the means of redress will readily 
be within the reach of the people, where the disparity 
to overcome is inconsiderable. This will be a posi- 
tion of affairs the people are not likely to com- 
plain of 

" A further gain to the public will be, that with 
larger wards than heretofore, and with larger interests 
to guard and promote, exceeding those of many 
Commonwealths of this Union, it may be confidently 
hoped that men of large experience and stake in the 
community, may be willing to serve in the city coun- 
cils. The city authorities then would combine the 
influence of the strongest men of the different politi- 
cal parties for the common welfare. The city then 
would always have in her service men in sympathy 
with the existing administrations of the State and of 
the General Government, that could not but result to 
the advantage of Philadelphia in her competitions 
with rival cities. 

*' As things have long existed in the present city, 
the community have had no advantage from the in- 
fluence of more than one party, and that, most fre- 
quently, not in political unison with the State and 
general administrations. In that city are concentrated 
the millions of property that make it the focus of the 
wealth of the State, and there are shaped the policy, 



AJ^G UMENT THEREFOR. 



79 



concerted the measures, and provided the means, that 
are chiefly instrumental in developing the wealth 
and advancing the prosperity of the metropolis and 
the State. But neither Democrats nor Natives have, 
for many years, participated in the city administra- 
tion; and the fact that they possess the power in the 
districts, makes their co-operation, for common 
measures, but the more difficult and unwilling; 
whereas, if all were combined in one legislative body, 
they would act with a concerted purpose, and with 
the united influence of all parties for the general 
welfare. 

" Nor should the State regard such a result with 
distrust or apprehension as likely to produce an over- 
shadowing influence. It is an indispensable result to 
enable Philadelphia to sustain the rivalry of other 
cities seeking to absorb her trade, wealth, and popu- 
lation. Pennsylvania cannot be indifferent to her own 
interests and honor in this regard. The increase of 
the trade, wealth, population, and power of Philadel- 
phia, are but accessions to those of the State. What- 
ever ability is added to the city and her citizens is a 
power added to the State to open her avenues of 
trade, to increase her wealth and resources. 

'* Philadelphia united in her counsels, her purposes, 
and her strength, could easily open her communica- 
tions to reach the trade of the north, northwest, west, 
and southwest. The vast trade that floats past, profit- 
less to Peimsylvania, might be transported on her 
own soil from her only lake-port to her only great 
seaport. Fleets of ocean steamers might bring not 
only the foreign importations, but the freights of 



8o CONS OLID A TION. 

Boston and New York upon the lines of Pennsylvania 
railways and canals, and find thereby the cheapest 
transit to the far west, and by the same channels be 
returned the produce of the interior and the iron and 
coal of Pennsylvania. 

" On the day that the bill consolidating the city and 
county of Philadelphia into one shall receive the ex- 
ecutive sanction, Philadelphia will be the largest and 
best built city in the United States. She would rank 
second in population only because the people are less 
crowded and more comfortably housed than those of 
New York, and her diminished commerce has thrown 
fewer immigrants upon her wharves. She is only 
second in commerce, because New York first opened 
a great avenue of trade to the west, and thus supplied 
the return freights for the ships that brought into 
port her imports and passengers, until by this action 
and reaction, both as cause and effect, a trade has 
arisen that outstrips all competition. It becomes us 
to take this lesson deeply to heart, and, knowing the 
cause, retrieve the error ; and this generation may 
yet see Philadelphia achieve in the aggregate, if not 
in all the elements, a power and greatness that will 
place her the foremost of American cities. But it 
will not be forgotten, that whatever be her increase, 
it will be so much added to the wealth, prosperity, 
and power of Pennsylvania. 

" In conclusion, the bill recommended to be enacted 
into a law, in place of many corporations, with dis- 
similar and conflicting powers and laws and opposing 
interests, with numerous sets of officers, police, and^ 
Vv'atchmen, will establish one city government, with 



ARGUMENT THEREFOR. 8 1 

one legislative authority, one executive head, one set 
of police and watchmen, and other public servants, 
with one code of laws and one common interest to 
bind all the parts together; instead of many loans of 
differing values, one consolidated loan of one value 
and of undoubted credit; instead of many collectors, 
seeking various taxes at every habitation, one general 
receiver of taxes, voluntarily paid, without commis- 
sions ; instead of many departments without super- 
vision or accountability, all will be placed under pub- 
lic observation to the citizens and accountability to 
councils, and held bound to the common centre; and 
instead of elements of strength and usefulness neu- 
tralized and lost by division, a union of the power and 
intelligence of all parts and parties will be concen- 
trated for the welfare, prosperity, and happiness of 
the city of Philadelphia and the Commonwealth of 
Pennsylvania." 

It is deemed important that the preceding report 
should be preserved entire, for its statement of the 
grounds upon which the Consolidation movement 
was based; so apt to be forgotten when the evils 
cured have ceased to be felt, and new generations 
can only know of them traditionally or by history. 
It is also due to those who gave much time and 
talent to the work, that they should be justified iii 
our municipal history, and have their fair meed of 
praise. 



CHAPTER V. 

PRINCIPAL PROVISIONS OF THE CONSOLIDATION ACT. 

Some of the features of the Consolidation Act 
should be here noticed. In place of a cumbrous 
name that of " The City of Philadelphia" was adopted 
as the style of the corporation. The identity of the 
corporation was carefully preserved, so that there 
should be no ground for a question as to trust titles 
and other property. It enacted that "the boundaries 
of the said City shall be extended so as to embrace 
the whole of the territory of the County of Phila- 
delphia, and all the pozvcrs of said corporation, as en- 
larged and modified by this act, shall be exercised, 
and have effect within the said County and over the 
inhabitants thereof" Mr. Fraley's pen thus embodied 
the comprehensive idea of the Sub-Committee and 
Committee. No power of the City was surrendered 
that was not inconsistent with the act, while certain 
powers of the Districts were also preserved, and the 
retained and new powers were made to pervade the 
area of the enlarged City. 

Besides the sanction of the professional opinion 
in the General Committee that formed the Bill, Mr. 
Price obtained and took with him to Harrisburg the 
written opinions of George M. Dallas and John M. 
Read, that the titles of the City to trust and other 
properties could not be impaired by the proposed law. 
(82 ) 



PROVISIONS OF HIE ACT. 3^ 

A recent decision of the Supreme Court of the United 
States, in the case of Girard vs. Philadelphia, 7 Wal- 
lace's Reports, i, fully affirms the validity of those 
opinions. It is there held that "neither the identity 
of a municipal corporation, nor its right to hold 
property devised to it, is destroyed by a change of 
its name, an enlargement of its area, or an increase 
in the number of its Corporators; and these are 
changes which the Legislature has power to make." 
The area of the City is divided into twenty-four 
wards, from which are to be elected one Common 
Councilman for every twelve hundred taxable inhab- 
itants, and one for every fraction of six hundred or 
more; and one member of Select Council for each 
ward. They are vested with the municipal legislative 
authority. All the property of the Districts was 
vested in the City, and all their debts charged upon 
the City. 

The Mayor is elected for two years; is relieved 
from sitting as a police magistrate ; and has greatly 
enlarged powers for the preservation of the public 
peace : " Besides the powers otherwise conferred by 
law, he shall have the like power and authority as 
the Sheriff of the County of Philadelphia now has 
for the suppression of any riot, disturbance, and vio- 
lation of law; and shall exercise the authority of 
making the requisition for the commanding officer 
of the military, in lieu of the Marshal of Police as 
now authorized by law, and of dismissing all police 
officers and watchmen ... for failure in the dis- 
charge of duty." He is to make recommendations 
to Councils in matters relating to the welfare of the 



34 CONSOLIDA TION. 

City; and to see that the municipal laws and ordi- 
nances are executed; may call special meetings of 
Councils, and exercise a veto power over the passage 
of ordinances, to be an effective negative until over- 
come by a vote of two-thirds of each chamber of 
Councils. 

A City Treasurer is made elective by the people; 
and also a Receiver of Taxes. The taxes are col- 
lected at a central office, with deductions for early 
payments, according to the period of such payments. 
This provision superseded many tax-collectors, who, 
like the firemen, had incurred the jealousy of the 
people on account of their combination and undue 
influence in nominating and electing candidates for 
office, and to Councils and the Legislature. 

A City Controller is a new provision. He is elec- 
tive by the people; and is to "countersign all warrants 
on the City Treasurer, and shall not suffer any appro- 
priation made by the City Councils to be overdrawn, 
and shall perform all the duties now enjoined by law 
on the County auditors." He is to superintend the 
fiscal concerns of the City, make report to Councils, 
and to scrutinize and publish the public accounts of 
the City and its trusts. 

The performance of executive duties have been 
taken from Councils and conferred upon Depart- 
ments, and these are made subject to the supervision 
of Councils. These are the Departments of Law, 
of Health, of Prison Inspection, Guardians of the 
Poor, of Police, of Highways, of Water, of Fire, of 
Surveys, of Education, Revision of the Tax Assess- 
ments, Port Wardens, all of which have their pre- 



PROVISIONS OF THE ACT. 



85 



scribed duties. The members of the Board of Health 
and Guardians of the Poor were made elective by the 
people in the Consolidation Bill; but politically elected 
incumbents were found to abuse their trusts in their 
management, and by supplement the appointment of 
the members of said Boards was conferred upon the 
Courts ; and yet later, all the City charitable trusts 
have been placed in the management of the appointees 
of the Courts. These instances, with others, show 
that partisan politics do not work up to the standard 
required for the good administration of trusts, either 
as respects ability or integrity. The people are always 
honest in their desires, but they are not usually 
afforded by the political managers such a choice of 
candidates, as to ability or integrity, as they might 
command, if those who do not seek office or place 
were selected instead of those who seek to profit by 
office or place, even when no salary is provided by 
law for the public service. 

The City was directed to organize a police depart- 
ment, and authorized to organize a fire department, 
and to regulate it "for the preservation of the public 
peace, the suppression of riot and disturbances, and 
for the extinguishment of fires, and the protection of 
property thereat, and for this purpose the said Coun- 
cils shall be and hereby are vested with ample power 
and authority in the premises." 

The details of the Act may be seen by reading it 
and its supplements. It is intended here to notice 
only its general features, and to enumerate the greater 
powers, by which the great City will be enabled to 
make its history, and provide for the welfare of its 



S6 CONSOLIDATION. 

Citizens when they shall be millions. The legislation 
under consideration has conferred the requisite powers, 
and it is only required that we shall be true to our- 
selves to accomplish a great destiny, and stand in the 
foremost rank of civilized communities. Consolida- 
tion has removed many facilities and temptations to 
disorder and crime, but it could not promise to reform 
human nature; and many evils yet exist that only 
the people themselves can remedy, by electing true 
men to Councils, and to fill the municipal offices, and 
to represent them in the State and Nation. They 
must be ever watchful and fearless in exposing and 
convicting the fraudulent and criminal, and thus 
purge their municipality, and their State and National 
representation of corruption. 

The following section is in the Charter, which pro- 
hibits the offence of corruption, and provides the 
remedy, whenever the covers of fraud can be stripped 
from the public functionary: 

" If any councilman, guardian of the poor, member 
of the board of health, controller, or director of the 
public schools, or warden, or inspector of the prison, 
or any other member or officer or agent of the said 
city corporation, or of any corporation or department 
by this act recognised, or clerk therein, shall at any 
time be directly or indirectly interested in any sale to 
or contract for supplies to be furnished to said city, 
or to any corporation or department by this act re- 
cognized or placed under the supervision of Councils, 
of which he shall be a member, or officer, or clerk, 
or agent, or shall receive any gratuity, money, or 
property whatsoever, by reason of such sale or con- 



PROVISIONS OF THE ACT. 



87 



tract, or shall take any fee beyond that prescribed by 
law, he, if a councilman, or elective officer, or officer 
appointed by court, shall be impeached in manner 
hereinbefore provided, and if found guilty shall for- 
feit and vacate his seat; and if any officer or clerk 
appointed by Councils, shall be removed from his 
office or appointment; and any vendor or contractor 
participating in such act, shall be incapable of re- 
covering any demand thus infected by fraud, and all 
such offenders shall be deemed guilty of a misde- 
meanor, and upon conviction of such offence in the 
Court of Quarter Sessions for said city and county, 
shall be fined and imprisoned at the discretion of said 
court." 

Whenever the proofs have been sufficient the 
Courts have done their duty, and, judging by the 
past, we may believe that they will continue to do 
their duty fearlessly. 

The Citizens to do their duty, besides exerting a 
perpetual vigilance, must know their devices, to ferret 
out the frauds of vicious officials. The most usual 
devices of fraud are to give out contracts with the 
understanding that a percentage of the price shall be 
paid to the officials; that stone, gravel, bricks, work, 
&c., shall be procured where officials are interested 
in the supply ; or that these be sold to the City at an 
overprice, or be overcounted, or overmeasured; and 
that the funds thus overdrawn from the treasury 
shall be divided among those whose votes or influence 
procured the improvement requiring the expenditure 
to be made. Those who act upon fraudulent motives 
may be considerably in the minority in such bodies 



S8 CONSOLIDA TION. 

as Councils, yet if they be enough to overcome the 
difference in votes between honest voters, they may 
control the measures of the body. This is the com- 
mon experience; and more than enough for success 
is not wanted in the ring to divide the spoils ; and 
thus the good and true men, to whom we all ow^e 
deep obligation, are unable to protect the City from 
the plunder which they know will follow municipal 
action. Hence it is that required improvements are 
often left undone by honest Councilmen. 

A most salutary principle of the Charter is that 
which requires provision for the extinguishment of a 
loan when it is made. " No debt shall.be incurred or 
loans made by the said City, without a cotemporane- 
ous appropriation of a sufficient annual income or 
tax, exclusive of loans, to pay the interest and sink 
the principal of such debt in thirty years." Under 
this provision all loans subsequently made to the City 
will be in course of liquidation after February, 1884, 
and the debts in time will become extinguished by 
the Sinking Fund, unless new loans continue to be 
made ; and of the occasion of these the people or their 
representatives themselves must be the judges. 

To the powers conferred by the Consolidation Act, 
there is yet wanted the security that they shall not be 
capriciously repealed or impaired by the Legislature 
or be superseded by Commissions; and that some 
further judicial power and quick and sharp remedy 
should be had over corrupt and delinquent officials. 
Mr. Price, at the instance of the Citizens' Municipal 
Reform Association, prepared some amendments 
that, if placed in the State Constitution, would supply 



PROVISIONS OF THE ACT, 89 

these wants. It is for the members of the Constitu- 
tional Convention to provide such protection for the 
Cities of the Commonwealth. That the Cities may 
be self-governed, without Legislative Commissions 
emanating in corrupt purposes, and that the public 
contracts may be executed without corruption or 
fraud, it is absolutely essential that the Citizens shall 
be clothed with efficient powers of prompt prevention 
and the sudden dismissal of offending officials. This 
being done there should be no occasion or excuse 
for any Commission, that, irresponsible to the people 
can yet tax them, for any amount of expenditure they 
may please to incur. There is in the establishment 
of such Commissions a violation of the fundamental 
principle which justified our ancestors in venturing 
upon the revolution of 1776 ; the principle that there 
shall be no taxation of a free people but by the 
chosen representatives of the people. 



CHAPTER VI. 

THE CONSOLIDATION FESTIVITIES. 

In the North American and United States Gazette, 
of the 13th of March, 1854, will be found an account 
of the Celebration of Consolidation on the nth of 
the month. The entertainments consisted of an ex- 
cursion on the Delaware, under the auspices of the 
Board of Trade, a ball at the Chinese Museum, a 
banquet at Sansom Street Hall, the visits of the 
Governor, the members of the Legislature and City 
Councils to various Public Institutions, and an illu- 
mination of the Public Buildings, the Hotels, and 
central parts of the City, with the exhibition of 
transparencies. 

The officers of the banquet were, — Chairman, 
Morton McMichael; Vice-Presidents, P. R. Freas, 
H. M. Watts, N. B. Browne, John P. Verree, Andrew 
Miller, William S. Price. 

The platform-table was occupied by the Chairman, 
Governor Bigler, the Hon. Mr. Chase, Speaker of the 
House of Representatives, Judge Sharswood, General 
Geor<7e M. Keim, William D. Lewis, Hon. Hendrick 
B.Wright, Hon. Richard Rush, Judges Lewis, Knox, 
and Woodward, of the Supreme Cour^of Pennsyl- 
vania, the Hon. George M. Dallas, the Hon. James 
Cooper, Mr. George B. Matthew, the British Consul 
( 90 ) 



FESTIVITIES. 91 

at the port of Philadelphia, Mayor Charles Gilpin, 
William B. Reed, District Attorney, Judge Oswald 
Thompson, and General George Cadwalader. 

But brief extracts can be given from the many 
appropriate speeches delivered at the banqueting 
tables ; and these are now given without the inter- 
spersed applauses of the audience. 

The Chairman said, — 

" It has seldom happened, never, I think, in the 
history of our own Commonwealth, that so many 
persons clothed with the functions of the State have 
assembled on an occasion not connected with the 
strict performance of official duty. The Chief Mag- 
istrate, the Members of the Legislature, the Judges 
of the highest tribunal known to our laws, the Con- 
trollers of our public Revenue, the Heads of Execu- 
tive Departments; in a word, the representatives of 
all the co-ordinate branches of our government are 
here to-night. Besides those who are here as the 
representatives of the State in its independent capac- 
ity, there are present those who represent it in the 
general councils of the nation, as well as those who 
have been selected from the State to administer and 
execute justice in behalf of the Federal Government. 
In addition to this, there are here assembled repre- 
sentatives of the various political, civil, and social 
constituencies that compose the strength and the 
power of the metropolis of the State. The executive 
and judicial local functionaries, — the chiefs of muni- 
cipal organizations, — the chiefs of commercial, indus- 
trial, scientific, literary, and educational associations, 
— the chiefs of the various interests connected with 



92 



CONS OLID A TION, 



the trade, the finances, the economy and the develop- 
ment of the city, — members, eminent members, of 
the various learned professions, and citizens distin- 
guished by long and useful lives of public service, 
are around and before me. Pennsylvania and Phila- 
delphia are here, symbolized and typified by those 
who have been selected by the popular voice, or 
through some instrumentality of the popular will, to 
exercise legislative and administrative functions, and 
thus to embody the sovereignty so delegated to them. 
Surely, — surely, such an assembly, not in reference 
to the individuals who compose it, but the vast con- 
cerns confided to their care, may well be pronounced 
august. 

"Nor is the occasion of this assemblage less re- 
markable than the assembly itself A people num- 
bering half a million of souls, heretofore divided by 
absurd geographical lines, and, worse still, too often 
m.aking those lines the boundaries of their public 
efforts, — a people who, though homogeneous in their 
pursuits and interests and affections, have been too 
often antagonistical in their practice, because of those 
boundaries, — this people, realizing their anomalous 
condition, and determined to correct' it, have, after 
repeated struggles and failures, at length accomplished 
the end they had in view, and are henceforth to be 
united, — to become one and indivisible. This grand 
event in the history of Philadelphia — for it is grand, 
both in its present aspect and future consequences — 
is the reason of our gathering to-night; and could 
there be a better or more sufficient reason for even 
such a concourse as this ? 



FESTIVITIES. g^ 

" But little more than sixty years ago the first 
charter was granted to the City of Philadelphia by 
the then existing government of the State. At that 
time Philadelphia, though the first city of the newly- 
established federal Union in population, in wealth, 
and in resources, was a city of scarcely thirty thou- 
sand inhabitants. Since then, within the period of 
three-score years and ten, assigned as the sum of 
man's ordinary existence, — within the personal re- 
membrance of at least one venerable gentleman who 
sits near me, — this city has grown to be a city of 
half a million; while in the arts, in industry, in com- 
merce, in science, in all the material of civil and social 
advancement, its growth has been commensurate with 
the growth of its population. And this growth it has 
attained in despite of discouraging drawbacks, — in 
despite of misfortunes and vicissitudes, — in despite, in 
its earlier day, of the ravages of pestilence, and, in its 
later day, of wide-spread commercial disaster, — in 
despite of unfriendly legislation and misdirected 
friendliness, and, above all, in despite of the discord- 
ant and inharmonious elements of its political con- 
stitution. It is not my province to-night, gentlemen, 
to dwell upon the topics at which I have glanced, — 
that will be more appropriately done by others, — but 
in view of what we have accomplished, even under 
the restraining influences of adverse circumstances 
and hostile sectional interests, may I not predict, and 
will you not all join in the prediction, that in the 
not distant future there is reserved a fullness of 
maturity, such as even our former progress can but 
faintly indicate, for Consolidated Philadelphia T' 



. CONSOLIDA TION. 

He concluded by giving the toast, " The State of 
Pennsylvania," and called upon Governor Bigler to 
respond. Among other things he presented was a 
verbal picture of what this spot was when William 
Penn came here, and when he at once founded this 
City and the State. He depicted the City's progress, 
and what it was within the memory of Hon. Richard 
Rush, then sitting by him, when, though the largest 
city in the States, her trade was transported first by 
pack-horses, and next by Conestoga wagons. He 
proceeded, "I have thus far been speaking of old 
Philadelphia as she was; as to the new Philadelphia 
as she is, augmented by her recent mighty accessions, 
I am not prepared to admit that, in an aggregation 
of the elements and qualities of a great and happy . 
city, she is second to any in the Union. She is no 
longer wanting in enterprise ; and I am sure her ter- 
ritorial sufficiency will not be doubted. With an area 
of 76,000 acres, inhabited by over a half a million 
of industrious, enterprising, and patriotic citizens— 
with her rich variety of industrial pursuits— her high 
attainments in the mechanic arts-with a sufficient 
channel for foreign commerce— with a safe harbor, 
and an unequalled extent of wharfage— with one iron 
arm already extended to the waters of the Ohio, and 
the efforts she is making to extend a similar limb to 
the lakes to gather in the rich fruits of the boundless 
Y/est— enjoying an unblemished reputation for com- 
mercial and financial integrity, who can doubt her 
future triumph, sustained, as she will be, by the fra- 
ternal sympathy of the entire State ? For whatever 
of prejudice may have heretofore existed between the 



FESTIVITIES. ^5 

country and city, I agree with my esteemed friend, 
the President of the Committee, that in interests and 
feehng, Philadelphia and Pennsylvania are one and 
indivisible. Intercourse, the greatest corrective of 
error and prejudice, has done its work, and the fruits 
of this occasion, I am confident, will be mutual friend- 
ship and fraternity from one extreme of the State to 
the other. 

" But, gentlemen, it is not commerce and trade, pop- 
ulation and wealth alone that must be placed in the 
scale when the aggregate merits of a nation or city 
are to be ascertained. The social and moral condi- 
tion of the people is a far mightier and nobler con- 
sideration. It is not so much the opulence of a city 
as the happy condition of the mass of its inhabitants 
that reflects its true glory. The largest share of indi- 
vidual comfort, the greatest measure of intellectual 
development, the highest degree of Christian and 
moral dignity, should be the standard by which we 
test the greatness of a city. And it is in this regard 
that Philadelphia stands relatively best and is most 
to be admired. From her earliest days her poor have 
suffered less than in most of the large cities. They 
have, at least, had houses to live in, and not been 
stowed away in cellars and garrets as in Paris and 
London, and, to some extent, in New York. Hu- 
manity and benevolence have been her distinguishing 
characteristics. Her hospitals for the sick — her spa- 
cious asylums for the widow, the orphan, and the 
insane — her home for friendless children — her hu- 
mane associations to relieve the animal necessities 
of the destitute — her infirmaries for the relief of the 



q5 consolida tion. 

helpless— her schools for the blind, the deaf, the 
dumb, the imbecile and the idiotic— her House of 
Refuge to reclaim vagrant or erring youth, with a 
hundred or more charitable associations, rise up as so 
many witnesses to testify that she has not been deaf 
to the demands of suffering humanity. Her two 
hundred and fifty-six churches and her numerous 
societies to disseminate the Gospel in heathen lands, 
evince that she has not rejected 'Hhat righteousness" 
which exalteth a nation. Her institutions are beacon 
lights to guide her in the path of duty, and show her 
the way to true glory. Her two hundred and eighty 
public schools, her colleges, her academies, her sem- 
inaries, her university, her almost countless number 
of literary associations and mechanic institutes, attest 
her appreciation of the cause of education, the great 
leverage by which mankind are elevated in the scale 
of civilization and Christianity. 

''Such, fellow citizens, are the distinguishing char- 
acteristics of this new and flourishing city ; and it is 
befitting that we should mingle our congratulations 
on the consummation of a measure so well designed 
to give her a fresh impetus in her growth, and to add 
a brighter lustre to her fame. The agency I had in 
this work, allow me to say, was a labor of love. I 
was prepared for it, and there is something signifi- 
cant in the circumstances which surrounded its con- 
summation, for I signed the bill in the north western 
extremity of the State, in the city of Erie, as though 
it were to be in future a covenant of mutual confi- 
dence, and protection between the extremes of our 
Commonwealth— or typical of a closer sisterly affec- 



FESTIVITIES. 



97 



tlon between the cities of Erie and Philadelphia ; and 
such I trust it may prove to be. 

" I congratulate you, therefore, Philadelphians, on 
the auspicious circumstances under which the con- 
solidated city commences her career — on the brilliant 
promises presented for her future. God and nature 
have blessed her with abundant means of prosperity, 
and it is only necessary that her present inhabitants 
use the ordinary means of industry and enterprise to 
give her the position she once occupied of the 
greatest city on the continent. Although in the 
race for commerce and trade she may possibly come 
out second best, yet in all the higher purposes of 
civilization, I confidently predict her triumph. The 
principles of benevolence and charity, interwoven, as 
they have been, with her whole history hke threads of 
gold, will never be permitted to lose their lustre. Like 
a rainbow of promise to suffering humanity, they will 
stand over and above all her other characteristics." 

After music the Chairman rose and said : 

" If we of Philadelphia have been indebted to the 
Governor for the readiness with which he signed our 
Consolidation bill, how much more are we indebted 
to the Legislature for the readiness and unanimity 
with which they passed the bill ? I have risen now 
for the purpose of proposing 'The Legislature of 
Pennsylvania,' in which you will, I know, heartily 
unite. 

" Gentlemen, as it cannot be expected that the 

Legislature should cheer themselves, we citizens 

must perform that ceremony for them ; and let us 

show, in reference to them, that out of the abun- 

E 9 



98 CONSOLIDA TION. 

dance of the heart the mouth speaketh, and how hand- 
somely we can cheer upon such an occasion." 

Prolonged and hearty cheers were then given for 
"the Legislature of Pennsylvania," after which Mr. 
Chase, Speaker of the House of Representatives, rose 
and among other things said : 

" The constituency of this great commonwealth, 
whose representatives we have the honor to be, greet 
you all. Hither, in their name, hither we have come 
to stand beside * the cradle of American independ- 
ence ;' but how changed the scene since that morn 
when the bell from yonder dome tolled out its loud- 
tongued peal, proclaiming 'liberty to the captive and 
freedom to the inhabitants of the earth.' To have 
been aptly styled 'the Cradle of Liberty,' to have 
been the theatre within which the solemn and mo- 
mentous acts of 'j6 were performed, might be the 
sufficient glory of this the proud metropolis of Penn- 
sylvania. If naught else existed here to fix the hearts 
of the people of these States to your altars and your 
household gods, this, and this alone, should be suffi- 
cient to embalm the * City of Brotherly Love' in 
the affections of every American patriot for all time 
to come, and stamp upon it the name of hallowed 
ground. Hither come the warm prayers of millions 
as to the Mecca of their earthly devotions. Around 
this lovely city cluster the fondest reminiscences of 
all that has been great, and good, and pure in Ameri- 
can republicanism. 

" Citizens, you have us your guests to-day, in com- 
memoration of an event in which, as Representa- 
tives of the Commonwealth, we acted a part. A few 



FESTIVITIES. 



99 



weeks since, and your city proper was embraced 
within narrow limits, — the space assigned to its birth. 
Long, long years had you struggled in vain to burst 
the fetters cast upon its infancy. You called aloud, 
and we responded to your call, by tearing asunder 
its swaddling clothes, and bringing you forth, in a 
day, to the gaze of the world, the largest, and one of 
the most powerful cities on the globe. Thus you are 
to-day, and thus we hail you now, as the jewelled 
bride of our Commonwealth, loved, honored and 
blest, while we earnestly invoke the favor of the 
Ruler of all human events, to rest upon thy walls 
and dwell within thy palaces." 

The next toast was ** The Supreme Court of Penn- 
sylvania," which was replied to by Judge Lewis. He 
spoke of the elective judiciary ; and said, — 

" With regard to this question of consolidation, no 
man can witness what has here been presented with- 
out feeling his heart rejoiced at the event; and in 
time to come we shall see that all the prejudices 
which have been spoken of have in reality passed 
away." 

To the toast '' The Consolidated City of Philadel- 
phia," George M. Dallas was called upon to reply : 
Two paragraphs of his discursive answer must here 
suffice : — 

" Mr. President — I am not prepared to throw any 
new light upon the subject of that toast. Consolida- 
tion has so long — some eight or ten years — been 
upon the anvil of public and private discussion, that 
an effort to strike a fresh spark from it by an addi- 
tional blow, would be labor lost. Its incidents and 



1 00 CONS OLID A TION. 

i';s contemplated results are all understood and fully 
appreciated by the distinguished gentlemen under 
whose legislative and executive auspices it has been 
finally perfected, and by whose welcome presence we 
are now honored. 

" In combining fourteen or fifteen distinct, and 
sometimes conflicting, municipalities, or public poli- 
tical agencies, into one, it was impossible not to 
anticipate the beneficial consequences which naturally 
flow from concord and co-operation. Unity of enter- 
prise, unity of sentiment, unity of legislation, unity 
of action, unity of contribution, unity of force, in all 
that relates to the common good, the common fame, 
the common safety, and the common order, are in- 
valuable aims which can scarcely fail to be attained." 

After speaking with a fond attachment to the 
Philadelphia of the past, he said, — 

" But, sir, I withhold. The tone of these reflec- 
tions is not made appropriate by either the times or 
the toast. Ours are an age and a country oi progress ; 
and of that, consolidation is the latest, a glorious 
and characteristic shoot. We have long since dis- 
proved and repudiated the lethargic aphorism of Dr. 
Johnson — 

" Extended empire, like expanded gold, 
Exchanges solid strength for feeble splendor." 

"Such a principle is unsound in application to 
American institutions. We have never yet been de- 
bilitated by enlargement, whether of City, State, or 
Nation; and for this plain reason, — that our power, 
or 'strength,' is not vested in a fixed few, but is 



FESTIVITIES. lOi 

found, constitutionally and legitimately, with the 
sovereign masses, wherever their localities may be. 
It is easy to become inert, sluggish, and immovable : 
to shrink and falter at every advance, and to habitu- 
ate the mind as well as the body to dread, as danger- 
ous and doubtful, the bold exposure of an onward 
march. But the advocates of consolidation have not 
felt, and need not feel, any such morbid apprehen- 
sions. 

" No ! we rather hold it better men should perish one by one, 
Than that the earth should stand at gaze, like Joshua's moon on 

Ajalon ; 
Not in vain the distance beckons; forward, forward let us range; 
Let the great world spin forever down the ringing groves of change; 
Through the shadow of the globe, we sweep into the younger day; 
Better fifty years of our Land than a cycle of Cathay !" 

Senator Cooper was next called upon to respond 
to the toast, " The Members of Congress from the 
State of Pennsylvania." His reply was upon national 
subjects and statesmen, after adverting to this as the 
place where sat the Continental Congress. 

" Mr. Cooper said, that his thanks were due to the 
assembly for the kind and complimentary terms in 
which it adverted to a body of men with whom it 
was his pleasure and pride to be associated. To 
have remembered them approvingly in the midst of 
the gay festivities by which the city was celebrating 
an era in her history, from whence her progress in 
wealth and greatness was to be accelerated, her influ- 
ence in the State increased, and nev/ safeguards 
thrown around the persons and property of her 
citizens, was a compliment deserving of sincere and 
hearty acknowledgment. 

9* 



1 02 CONS OLID A TION. 

" The sentiment, he said, was full of suggestiveness. 
It carried the mind not only to the Capitol, where 
the present representatives of a great nation were 
deliberating how its wealth was to be augmented, 
and how far its strong arm was to be stretched forth 
to buckler the oppressed of other lands, but back- 
ward to the period when the fathers of the Republic 
first held council, not as to how the wealth of the 
colonies was to be augmented, but their liberty won; 
not as to how their power was to be increased, but 
their just and inalienable rights preserved; not as to 
whether their arm was to be stretched forth as the 
shield of others, but whether, relying on their own 
deep devotion to freedom, and the aid of the God of 
battles, they could maintain the cause to which they 
pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred 
honor," 

To the toast, " The Commercial Representatives 
of Foreign Governments at the Port of Philadelphia," 
the British Consul, Mr. Matthew, was called upon : 
After some preliminary remarks he proceeded to 
speak in terms accordant with the present restored 
good feelings between the two countries : 

" Gladly, believe me, have I been present, and with 
much satisfaction and enjoyment have I listened to 
the admirable expositions and brilliant remarks that 
have been made. 

** It would be idle in me to resume a subject al- 
ready so ably discussed. But I am proud to con- 
gratulate Philadelphia, a city in v/hich I have the 
honor to be a resident, upon what has been said by 
her Representatives and others who have preceded 



FESTIVITIES, 103 

me. Their remarks have called to my mind some 
lines of one of our oldest and quaintest of poets, 
which, evidently, those gentlemen must have been 
conscious of, or to which, at all events, their acts 
make them, practically, parties — 

" No man is born unto himself alone ; 
Who lives unto himself he lives for none ; 
The State's a body, each man a brother is, 
And bound to add his measure to the public peace." 

** Individually, I cannot be uninterested in the in- 
creased commercial prospect that has opened upon 
Philadelphia. Indeed, I must hail with the greatest 
pleasure this evidence of her holding her proper 
position among the cities of the United States. 

" I may, I believe, attribute the kindly reception I 
have met with on this and other social occasions, 
from the people of the United States, to the just appre- 
ciation I entertain of their present power, and of their 
great, their inevitable future. So far from its being 
a matter of jealousy, I believe that I speak the feel- 
ings of every enlightened Englishman when I say 
that it is a matter of pride and gratification to us all. 
That future, gentlemen, I repeat, is inevitable. It is 
inevitable as long as you adhere to the councils of 
one, not less revered in my country, in private opinion, 
than in his own, as the great, the noble, the pure- 
minded Washington. 

" I like not, sir, to follow a beaten track, but it is 
easy for every man who reads, to feel, as I do, the 
peculiarities of the history of the world. Empire, 
from the earliest period of the world, has travelled 
westward ; and one cannot but have observed that 



I04 CONSOLIDATION. 

as it has travelled westward, so it has assumed the 
form of refinement and civilization. Empire will 
travel westward with you, blessed by the fruits of 
commerce, and gilded by the halo of peace and good 
will to all men." 

Frederick Fraley was called upon to answer 
"The Industrial resources of Philadelphia." These 
he traced, as to printing, from Benjamin Franklin's 
beginning as a printer here, to the triumphs of the 
steam press; from the first chemical laboratory of the 
grandfather of the then John Price Wetherill to the 
many that at this time existed over the enlarged City; 
and the cotton-spinning and weaving from the hand- 
loom up to factories employing a thousand hands; 
and the manufacture of Locomotives from the first 
one made in this country, by M. W. Baldwin, to that 
time when he was, as the same establishment is now, 
the largest supplier of Locomotives in the country, 
and to those that Eastwick & Harrison were building 
for the Emperor of Russia. He adverted to steam 
as applied to navigation by P^itch, and by Robert 
Fulton, to its employment on the Mississippi and 
the other rivers and Lakes of the Country. After 
further notice of our industrial progress, Mr. Fraley 
proceeded : 

" The true sources of commercial prosperity are 
found, Mr. President, in the productions of agriculture, 
mining and manufacture; the abundant possession 
of these productions will bring ships and customers; 
and wealth, population and foreign trade all naturally 
follow. What a bright destiny and future may we 
not, then, cherish for our beloved city ! Most of us 



FESTIVITIES. 105 

recollect when it was 'first among its peers'^ and it 
needs no very sanguine temperament to predict that 
it will soon be first again. Its manufacturing- and 
mechanical industry now far exceeds that of the 
whole of the old thirteen States at the commencement 
of the present century, and their march is still onward. 
Let us wisely and abundantly foster these potent 
elements of our strength, and pointing to the foot of 
the giant as it is emerging from the womb of the 
future, say out to our contemporaries *ex pede Her- 
culem.' " 

Gen. Geo. M. Keim answered to " The great Staples 
of Pennsylvania, her coal and iron." Among other 
things he said, — 

" Philadelphia is now stepping fearlessly forward 
to achieve what she can, and what she ought ere this 
to have accomplished ; and she will yet rank among 
not only the first cities of this Union, but among the 
first in the world. She has all the elements of power 
within her own grasp, and she will now cany out 
the design of the founder of Philadelphia, by whom 
this city has been called * the City of Brotherly Love.' 
The iron business must finally become the main 
reliance of this Commonwealth." 

William D. Lewis spoke upon " The Commerce 
of the City." Among other appropriate things he 
said, — 

" It is well known that the geographical position 
of this city gives it advantages, as a distributing point, 
over all others. To ensure to us their full enjoyment it 
is only necessary that we should imitate, and outstrip, 
the good example of our neighbors by securing, as 

E* 



1 06 CONS OLID A riON. 

we can, such access to the Western States as will 
place our means of intercommunication with those 
prosperous communities beyond the reach of rivahy. 
Something we have already done in this direction : 
witness the daily throngs of trav^ellers who reach us 
by our only western avenue, and the condition of our 
streets surrounding its depots blocked up with the 
merchandise there seeking an outlet. But much 
remains to be done. And it is not necessary for me, 
in such a company as this, to present arrays of figures 
to show how vastly more important is internal than 
external commerce." 

To "- The Bar of Philadelphia," Wm. B. Reed re- 
sponded. His address had no bearing on consolida- 
tion. 

Judge Conrad spake to "Our Railroad Connec- 
tions," with characteristic fervor and eloquence, as 
essential means to build up the greatness of the City 
and State. 

At a late hour, the Chairman seeing Mr. Rush rise 
to depart, recalled him by a toast to " The health of 
the Hon. Richard Rush." After a {q.\n remarks he 
said : 

"The occasion has been a joyous one, and joyous 
not only to the Philadelphians who have been present, 
but joyous, also, to thousands and tens of thousands 
who have been absent. Mr. President and gentlemen, 
I thought that I had always been a zealous Philadel- 
phian. Born here, as my forefathers were, from the 
time of Penn, I could have no other feelings than 
those of pride. But they have been tenfold increased 
to-day. Surely we have a right to be proud of our 



FESTIVITIES. 107 

city — the leading city of the old thirteen colonies 
before the Revolution; the city, the sound of whose 
State House bell — as has been beautifully remarked 
by Mr. Speaker Chase — summoned the representa- 
tives of those thirteen old and noble colonies to the 
birthplace of Independence, — the city which took a 
leading share in that great and glorious struggle ; 
not by her numbers alone, but by her various re- 
sources, and, above all, by her steady and invincible 
devotion to the cause of the Revolution — the city 
which, by the contribution of her means, her money 
and her courage, enabled our great and glorious 
Washington, — to whose mighty name and fame our 
distinguished foreign guest referred with so much 
gratification to us all, — to achieve the first and great- 
est of his military triumphs, and which finally en- 
abled him, when our powerful foe thought, and with 
reason, that we were prostrate at his feet, to turn 
disaster into victory and gloiy. 

"I am sure that our distinguished guest will allow 
me to say iJiat. I assert it, because it is history, and 
I assert it, because he has the spirit in him, Briton 
as he is, to do us justice, and appreciate the result. 
And when we had such great names as Chatham, 
Burke, Camden and others with us, he must admit 
that we would not have been worthy to be English- 
men if we had submitted to that galling oppression 
which the spirit of no true Briton would ever brook. 

"These are some of the glories of Philadelphia. 
This is the city in which the Federal Constitution 
was formed, the city in which, with the exception of 
his native State, Virginia, Washington spent the 



Io8 CONSOLIDATION. 

greater portion of his life, the home of Frankhn, 
whose ashes sanctify our soil. Surely we have reason 
to be proud of such a city. But I do not mean to 
forget to say — and it is a main purpose with me to 
say it — although it has been already said far better 
than I can utter it — that we owe what we are and 
what we have been, to the State to which we belong. 
They are identical ; the prosperity of the one is iden- 
tical with the prosperity of the other. I need not 
enlarge upon her resources. With the prosperity of 
the Commonwealth we prosper; and with the pros- 
perity of our city, I trust that our great and noble 
State will derive reciprocal advantage. Let us hope 
that this night may consolidate us in our affect'ions 
and in our hearts, as we have ever been in our in- 
terests. 

" But I cannot conclude the few and hasty words I 
have uttered without quoting the sentiment, than 
which better could not have fallen, among the many 
excellent ones, from the lips of our Chief Magistrate, 
that the future of Philadelphia may realize the promises 
of the past and go beyond them." 

The following letter was received from Mr. Price: 

" PlllLADKLPHiA, March li, 1854. 

" To Mortoji McMicJiael, Esq.^ Chairman of the Con- 
solidation Committee : — 

" A recent bereavement prevents my being with 
my brethren of the Senate on your festive occasion. 
Say for me to those assembled that the people of 
Philadelphia owe their consolidation into one city to 
the unanimitv of their own will, and to the liberal 



FESTIVITIES. 



109 



justice of the Senators, Representatives, and Execu- 
tive of the Commonwealth. By their authority will 
be accomplished the most important event in our mu- 
nicipal history, and from the year of our Lord 1854 
will be dated the re-foundation of the city of Philadel- 
phia. The authors of the generous act will not fail 
to regard their work with kindness, and the citizens 
will not cease to acknowledge their debt of gratitude. 

"To the citizens of Philadelphia I would further 
say that the task of reorganizing a government of a 
national importance will demand the aid of their most 
capable men. The separated parts are to be united 
into a harm^onious whole, the laws reconciled and 
enforced, all disorders repressed, commerce and man- 
ufactures encouraged, the city's credit sustained, her 
ch'aracter elevated. The emergency authorizes you 
to appeal to the patriotism of Philadelphia's strongest 
and most reliable citizens. Services required by the 
public welfare the people may demand in terms that 
will admit of no refusal. 

" I will but add that the event you celebrate is 
founded in the principle that the public good is the 
supreme law, which alike guards State rights from a 
national centralization and demands that incongruous 
municipal divisions should be transformed into one 
consolidated city. May it be perpetuated in its integ- 
rity until Philadelphia, now the largest, shall become 
the most populous and wealthy city on the continent, 
— the metropolis of a State the richest in resources 
and the elements of power of any in the Union. 
" I am, with sincere regard, 

" Eli K. Price." 



CHAPTER VII. 

THE MOBS THAT PRECEDED CONSOLIDATION. 

It is sometimes asked, has consolidation upon the 
whole been beneficial to Philadelphia ? They who 
ask the question are usually so youthful as to have 
little or no recollection of the evils and obstructions 
that preceded that event ; or they are of the few 
who at the time were opposed to it, and consistently 
will not admit any resulting benefits : persons con- 
stitutionally opposed to progress, who would have 
preferred in the Revolution to remain colonists, and 
to live ever since under the common law much as 
our ancestors brouG^ht it from En^jland. Those who 
have no memory of the miry, rugged and hilly road 
that preceded the smooth and level turnpike on which 
they are traveling, can have little appreciation of the 
blessing of the change ; and those who are averse to 
enterprise, and have an abhorrence of all change, 
cannot be expected to sympathize with the rapid 
growth of cities, States, and the nation, as we ad- 
miringly see them springing up and advancing from 
the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean. 

It seems incumbent, therefore, upon some friend 
of the re-foundation of the City, to set forth in some 
detail the most aggravating of the evils that induced 
the change, and to make some historical comparison 
between the condition of things between the less than 
(no) 



PRIOR HISTORY. HI 

twenty years which have passed since the date of 
consoHdation, and the like period which preceded it. 

Three causes have been operative to produce the 
great riots which disgraced our City for many years: 
the hatred of the negro by vulgar and inhuman white 
men; the antagonism of labor to machinery; and the 
hostility of Orangeism and Nativeism to the Catholics. 

In 1835, because a colored Cuban boy had at- 
tempted to kill Mr. Stewart, with whom he lived, a 
mob of white men collected at Sixth and Seventh 
and Lombard and South Streets. They chased and 
maimed and mangled the people of color; broke 
open many of their houses ; fired Red Row, and 
prevented the firemen from extinguishing the flames. 
This mob raged for two nights, and the colored 
fam'ilies fled the neighborhood, not knowing where 
to find shelter. (16 Haz. Reg. 36.) This was a 
repetition of similar riots that had occurred in the 
same sections of the City and Southwark in previous 
years. 

" The Pennsylvania Hall " was built at the south- 
west corner of Sixth and Haines Street, between 
Arch and Race Streets, by those interested in the 
Abolition cause, but for the discussion of Abolition 
principles, of Temperance, Liberty, and Equality. It 
was a commodious and splendid building. It was 
opened to the public on the 14th day of May, 1838; 
but before the Inaugural proceedings were completed, 
it became the occasion of great misrepresentation 
and excitement among the citizens. On the 17th the 
building was occupied by the Anti-Slavery Conven- 
tion of American Women, who, though all day sur- 



1 1 2 CONS OLID A TION. 

rounded by a threatening mob, conducted themselves 
with great composure and dignity. They were, how- 
ever, invaded in the evening by the ruthless assem- 
blage, through whom they were compelled to make 
their retreat. The Mayor had been fully warned of 
the danger, but made no demonstration of defence. 
The sworn testimony was that fifty resolute police- 
men could have saved the building. The Hall was 
burnt to the ground. Its destruction cost the County 
of Philadelphia ;^22,658. 27, besides interest and costs. 

The rioters continued under excitement, and the 
next night, the i8th, a body of entire strangers to 
the locality attacked and set fire to the Friends' 
charitable institution, called the Shelter for Colored 
Children, in Thirteenth Street above Callow^hill, and 
considerably damaged the building before the fire 
was extinguished. And the next evening, the 19th, 
Bethel Church, in South Sixth Street,, belonging to 
colored people, was attacked and sustained injury. 

In 1842, when Rev. Stephen Smith, a person of 
color, had nearly finished his Hall on Lombard Street, 
for public and philanthropic meetings, it was fired 
and burnt down by a negro-hating mob ; and the 
same fire reached Mary Street Presbyterian Church 
for colored persons, and also burnt it down ; and in 
1849 the same church was burned, with the Califor- 
nia House, by a mob hostile to the people of color. 
Of course these losses were paid by the County. 
Now, besides the better protection secured them 
under the new Charter, the colored citizens are still 
further assured of their protection by their enjoy- 
ment of the elective franchise. They have now, to 



FRIOR HISTORY. 



113 



a certainty, rights which the white man is bound to 
respect, and which the law will take care shall be 
respected. 

In the spring of 1843 a riot took place in Kensing- 
ton. It was a war between labor and machinery, 
called the Irish weavers' riot. Our young Sheriff, 
William A. Porter, Esquire, went to the scene of dis- 
turbance with his Posse. It was his first duty by law 
to warn the rioters to disperse, by reading a procla- 
mation, in the nature of a riot act. While thus 
occupied, he and his men were stoned and over- 
powered by vastly greater numbers; and Mr. Porter 
was so maimed that he could reach home only with 
great difficulty, pursued by the rioters, from whom, 
though they surrounded him, he was well disguised 
by the change wrought in his appearance whilst 
trampled under their feet. From exhaustion he was 
obliged to take shelter in a private house, wdience 
he was compelled to make his escape. They had 
free scope to destroy the machinery which was the 
object of their hostility ; and when a more formid- 
able force appeared next day, the rioters had vanished. 

The great riots which occurred in 1844 arose out 
of the hostility of the Native Americans, probably 
aided by Orangemen, against the Catholics. The 
new party was based mainly in hostility to the Catho- 
lics ; and they had the imprudence to hold one of 
their first public meetings in Kensington, May 3d, 
1844, where Irish Catholics abounded, and the latter 
had the greater imprudence and rashness to attack 
the meeting by an overpowering force. A second 
meeting was held there on the 6th, and speeches were 

10* 



1 14 CONS OLID A TION. 

made. The Irish renewed the attack with bricks, 
stones and fire-arms ; and George Shiffler was shot 
and killed and others were wounded. He was re- 
garded as a martyr in the cause of his party. On the 
7th the Natives held a large meeting in Independence 
Square, when the officers and speakers exhorted to 
peace; but the mass of the meeting adjourned them- 
selves by a common impulse to Kensington, to renew 
the fight. They met at the Market-house, and were 
fired upon from the houses, whereupon these were 
attacked by the Natives ; many were wounded, seven 
killed ; many houses and the Market-house were burnt. 
The military under General Cadwalader appeared at 
dark and restored quiet, and then the firemen operated. 
On the 8th, St. Michael's Catholic Church and par- 
sonage were fired and burnt down, and also the Catho- 
lic Female Seminary ; and the battering and firing of 
other houses of the Catholics were continued by 
persons who eluded the military. At ten at night St. 
Augustine's Church, in Fourth below Vine, and the 
contiguous houses of the Order of the Brothers of the 
Hermits of St. Augustine, were fired and destroyed, 
with their valuable library. St. Mary's, St. Joseph's, 
Trinity, and St. Philip's Churches, and the Cathedral, 
were threatened and guarded. On the loth the 
Governor arrived, and many companies of soldiers 
from the country followed from day to day. The 
damages incurred by the County and City were very 
heavy, for property destroyed and for the payment 
and support of the troops. The Hermits of St. Au- 
gustine claimed one hundred thousand dollars, and the 
jury gave them a verdict of $47,433.88. The owner 



PKIOR HISTORY 



115 



of tlie School House occupied by the Sisters of 
Charity recovered ^6468.98 ; and other damages were 
recovered, besides a claim by the District of Kensing- 
ton ; the Court excusing the Commissioners from 
the imputation of neglect, inasmuch as the mob came 
from the City, and, as the Judge said, *' burst upon 
the District with the suddenness of a thunder cloud." 
(i Har. 7^.) 

At this time the city had a night watch, but no 
proper police, and such force as it had was confined 
to Vine Street on the north, and South Street on the 
south, and between the two rivers. The Sheriff had 
no police, nor funds to arm or pay a Posse Coniitatus ; 
and the paltry sum of seventy-five dollars he had 
spent for Mace, as the beginning of some protection, 
the County Commissioners had refused to refund 
him ; and when he found himself powerless to act 
without the military, these hesitated to act, because 
on former occasions they had not been paid for 
services, or refunded expenditures ; and when they 
could not refuse the patriotic appeal of Sheriff Mc- 
Michael, and they appeared on the scene in adequate 
force, great destruction had already been accom- 
plished. Small matters have been thus referred to 
that we may now^ perceive and remember how trivial 
were our civil preparations of defence against sudden 
riots ; and how absolute was the necessity of a reor- 
ganization to concentrate and make effective for self- 
protection the great inherent powders of the whole 
community of people, lying in one mass of disjointed 
corporations. 

The hostility that raged in -May but smouldered 



1 1 6 CONS OLID A TION. 

to break forth in July. A party of Natives had a 
procession on the 4th, and a picnic in Fisher's woods, 
north of the City ; and encamped on the ground for 
the night. While sleeping they were attacked and 
beaten, their property destroyed and flags carried off. 
This renewed the excitement. Their formxcr enemies 
were suspected to be the authors of the outrage. 
The next exciting cause was the discovery, on the 
5th, that arms had been taken into the Church of St. 
Philip de Neri, in Queen Street, west of Second, 
Southwark. The people gathered by thousands 
about the Church, and demanded a search ; and a 
supply of muskets, pistols, powder and cartridges 
was found in it. The military were called out to 
protect and took possession of the place. The peo- 
ple were entreated by Sheriff McMichael and Gen- 
eral Cadwalader to disperse, and were shown great 
forbearance, though the military were treated with 
incessant abuse and assailed by missiles. The mob 
was persistent ; but no gun was fired until the night 
of Sunday the 7th. There were always some friends 
of order among the mob, party leaders, who under- 
took to be responsible for the safety of the Church, 
but who could not control their follo,wers, who en- 
tered and fired the Church ; but the fire was extin- 
guished. At night the military were disposed of at 
points contiguous to the Church. The crowd in 
Queen and Second Streets refused to retire; attacked 
the Captain of the City Guard and attempted to kill 
him with his own sword, when the Lieutenant or- 
dered his men to fire ; many were wounded, several 
were killed, and then the mob dispersed. But yet 



PRIOR HISTORY. nj 

the more exasperated, they returned with cannons 
loaded with iron missiles and bottles, which they 
managed with skill, and moving them secretly in the 
darkness with muffled wheels, so that the soldiers 
could not know whereto direct their fire until guided 
by the flash of the enemy's guns. They were also fired 
upon fi-om windows, alleys, and covert places ; and the 
cavalry were thrown by ropes drawn across the streets. 
To avert this danger of fire as directed by the flash, the 
mob discharged their cannons by slow matches, and 
then, by long ropes attached, suddenly snatched them 
away for reloading. At one time three cannons were 
thus simultaneously discharged upon the soldiery, so 
as to rake the streets from different points. Before 
daylight these guns were captured, and all was again 
quiet. During the day, July 8th, a committee came 
from the Commissioners of Southwark to the Head- 
Quarters of Governor Porter and General Patterson, 
at the building of the Girard Bank, with assurances 
that if the military were withdrawn, the peace could 
be maintained by the civil authority; and after due 
consultation they were withdrawn. As in May, the 
military had been called here from contiguous parts 
of the State, and application had been made to the 
United States authorities for aid, which would have 
been forthcoming. Five thousand of the military were 
under arms, including several cavalry companies, with 
the City Troop of cavalry. About fifty persons were 
wounded, and fourteen were killed, two of them 
soldiers. 

The distressing doubt and uncertainty that existed, 
paralyzing timely action until riot and arson had done 



1 1 8 CONSOLIDA TION. 

their destructive work, was, whether it was the SheriiT 
or Mayor, who had authority to call out the miHtary, 
or whether either could, and whether the military 
would not be committing murder. Hence it was the 
Governor was required to be here, and at that time 
no telegram could call him here, and time was lost 
in sending for him. This source of trouble and its 
dangers are removed by the express authority now- 
conferred upon the Mayor by the City Charter. 

Since the date of Consolidation no mob of any 
magnitude has gained head within the bounds of the 
enlarged City ; though some years elapsed before 
the Firemen's battles were put down, under the 
authority conferred by the City Charter. This was 
delayed by their continuing influence over the elec- 
tions and Councils. 

Though ample authority was conferred by the 
Consolidation Act, the Volunteer Fire Department 
has only been fully dealt with within a few years ; 
when the Paid Fire Department was established, 
accompanied by a Fire Brigade for the protection of 
goods from theft, and destruction by water, aided by 
an efficient Police. Most persons of lawful age can 
remember that it was of very frequent occurrence for 
hostile companies of firemen to fight their battles 
along our streets, with paving-stones and fire-arms ; 
and that fires were often kindled that they might 
have opportunities of fighting out their feuds, or of 
showing Firemen-visitors from other cities how we 
put out fires. Sunday was the favorite day for such 
heroic amusements. And even when fires were seri- 
ous the exhibitions of the firemen were neither in- 



PRIOR HISTORY, H^ 

structive to visitors nor safe to the citizens, when 
companies fought for the possession of fire-plugs 
while the fire gained head ; and they rivaled each 
other in deluging places with water and destroying 
goods, after the necessity had ceased. They also 
permitted thieves under Firemen's uniforms to plun- 
der property they should have saved. Nay, in some 
instances they refused to extinguish fires, when fires 
were lighted by mobs with whom the Firemen sym- 
pathized, as in the case of the Pennsylvania Hall, 
and Catholic and African Churches and Schools; or 
until promised money for their company, as in the 
case of M. W. Baldwin's Locomotive Factory, while 
he was a member of the Legislature. Their votes 
at elections were also, in some instances, said to be 
influenced by the contributions by candidates to 
their companies. They were frequent beggars for 
contributions from the City, the Insurance Com- 
panies, and individuals, when politicians unduly 
yielded, because they feared the loss of their votes, 
and others feared the refusal of the firemen to ex- 
tinguish fires, when their property should be burn- 
ing. It required great independence in the Press 
and Councils to effect the final disbandment; but 
they were at last independent, and irrespective of 
party, good men regarded the true public sentiment, 
and did the work bravely. Mayor Fox especially 
deserved credit for his part in this work, for he 
acted against the general voice of his party. While 
the writer has been compelled thus to write about 
the firemen of this City, he is also bound to say, that 
he remembers a period, more than half a century 



120 



CONSOLWA TION. 



ago, when he was also a fireman, and when the fire- 
men were among the most orderly, as surely they 
were some of the most public-spirited and self-sacri- 
ficing citizens ; and they continued to be such until 
after the expiration of the first quarter of this cen- 
tury, and individuals continued to be such at all 
times; but these did not constitute the body, or 
characterize that department of service, for many 
years before and several after the middle of this cen- 
tury. Such a triumph gives encouragement to the 
people to be ever hopeful for the right, and strengthens 
our faith in the maxim, '* Never to despair of the 
Republic." Yet we are warned by the recent great 
fires of Chicago and Boston that our fire-engines 
should be at once doubled, and the working force be 
steadily increased, by every proper consideration of 
safety and economy. 



CHAPTER VII I. 

OTHER ADVANTAGES OF CONSOLIDATION. 

Though the limits of the City expanded at a 
bound, the minds of the citizens could not be so 
suddenly enlarged. For generations they had been 
cramped within narrow sectional limits, and the public 
functionaries could not at once realize, nor have they 
yet fully comprehended, the situation. As our water- 
pipes and sewers have not yet been conformed to the 
wants of the enlarged City, so have the public servants 
been slow to follow out the purposes of consolidation. 
It was not until 1867 that we began to enlarge Fair- 
mount Park, which twelve years ago would have cost 
some millions less ; not until later could we supply 
the much-needed House of Correction, now built, but 
not yet in use ; we have, since consolidation, built 
but one bridge over the Schuylkill, and have another 
unfinished; have done little towards repaving Broad 
and other Streets ; have hardly finished Belmont 
Water-works, and but begun the East Park basin, so 
that our present supply of water is not half that 
which safety requires; and we have but just begun 
the Public Buildings, and ten years must elapse before 
they will be ready for occupation. Though there is 
safety in deliberation, to delay necessary work is 
seldom true economy. We had, however, the war 

F 11 (121) 



122 CONSOLIDATION. 

of the rebellion to divert our attention and resources, 
and there was in that large excuse for omitting 
municipal works. 

Water and Gas were formerly furnished in the City 
and Districts at rates fixed by the local corporate 
authority, and the Taxes in all were different. The 
system of Sewage was limited to each, and greatly 
inadequate in all ; as were mostly the supply and dis- 
tribution of water and gas ; while none had a relia- 
ble ability to meet the growing wants of all. Nay, 
not only did they not act with the concert and 
strength of all, but by jealousy and opposition each 
was the cause of obstruction and weakness to all others. 
It was a necessity that the City must have her water 
and gas supplies from places beyond her area of two 
square miles ; and it will be a necessity that her cul- 
verts shall go beyond such limits, when they shall be 
built, as in time they must be constructed commen- 
surately with the wants of the large City, when more 
experience abroad and fuller consideration shall 
demonstrate what shall be the best plan for the entire 
Sewage system for the enlarged municipality. 

The City has, however, begun to construct her 
great systems of improvement. She has nearly 
finished the second bridge over the Schuylkill. Many 
will be required as the City shall extend her buildings 
and improve her Park. The Water-works have been 
greatly improved at Fairmount, the dam is being 
solidly rebuilt; the Belmont Water-works and basins 
are nearly finished, and are in use ; and the East 
Park basin, of an area of one hundred and six acres, 
is in course of construction. These are works done 



ADVANTAGES. 



123 



or in hand, to which any one old municipaHty would 
have been inadequate. How totally incompetent, 
then, would either have been to control the purity 
of the waters of the Schuylkill and secure the re- 
quisite supply, when our population shall be two, 
three, or more millions, with manufactories to be 
supplied in numbers and magnitude not now to be 
imagined ! The time will come when the vacant 
stretches of the Schuylkill river, as well as the valleys 
in the mountains, must be made retaining reservoirs 
of water, to be drawn upon to meet the deficiencies 
of the dry seasons ; and it may ultimately be that the 
City must own and control the whole river for an 
adequate supply of pure water. A due protection 
from fire will require that all our basins shall be kept 
full at the dry season. 

The true system for the drainage of the City has 
never yet been fully considered and thought out ; 
and we wait the results of the trials of European 
Cities. So far we have but enlarged and built cul- 
verts upon the old plans, all terminating in the two 
rivers, polluting their waters, making them an offence, 
and deleterious to health. They should centre on a 
low public place, where their fertilizing properties 
would be received and utilized, and not be lost by 
evaporation ; but be manufactured into manure, and 
returned to the soil, to restore the loss of perpetual 
grazing and cropping. The City owes so much to 
the Country, and has her interest in such economy. 
These Sewers should not only receive all the excre- 
tory matter of the City, but all the drainages of the 
slaughter-houses and factories ; except it be the great 



124 



CONSOLIDA TION. 



slaughter-houses that should be along the present old 
Wilmington Railroad, in the meadows of the Twenty- 
seventh Ward, to which the cattle should be trans- 
ported in the cars, instead of being driven through 
the City and the Park ; and there the animals, fevered 
and impoverished by their long Railroad transporta- 
tion, should be refreshed and restored to good con- 
dition by pasturing for a time before being slaugh- 
tered. And here also the offal should be utilized. 

As a necessary means to protect the supply of 
water, the Fairmount Park has been purchased and 
laid out, of a magnitude of nearly three thousand 
acres. This comprehends parts of four former Dis- 
tricts, and of three Townships. Without the con- 
centrated power and wealth of all the municipalities 
and townships, united in one City, this great acquisi- 
tion could not have been made when it was made, 
on both sides of the river from the Fairmount bridge, 
and thence some ten miles northward, along the 
Schuylkill and Wissahickon; and if delayed, it would 
have soon become impracticable to command the 
same space it now covers. How much the whole 
population will be compensated in all future time, in 
the comfort, health, and enjoyment of pure water, 
fresh air, and beautiful scenery, transcends all esti- 
mate; but certainly, compared with its advantages, 
its cost will be insignificant. The old City, and the 
remote Districts and Sections, with their natural 
selfish jealousies, could never have been brought to 
a concert of action for such an achievement. And 
now soon, in 1876, that Park will afford the site for 
the Centennial Celebration, justly expected to be such 



ADVANTAGES. 125 

as will not be again seen until the lapse of another 
century shall call for a second like exhibition. Next 
to the Hall of Independence the Fairmount Park 
will be the cause of attracting the greatest Industrial 
Exhibitions this Continent will ever behold. The 
Park, too, will have its own future history, written 
with ample materials. It will teach its own sciences 
and other refining culture ; and constantly refine and 
improve the whole population. It will cultivate the 
taste of all in the beauty of its landscapes ; make 
the people more happy and healthy ; cause them to 
live longer and love each other better ; for happiness 
thus consciously derived from the contributions of 
all is ever sympathetic and kind. It will teach land- 
scape gardening, the fine arts, botany, and zoology ; 
it will be a beneficence not only to our citizens, but to 
those of the State and Country, and to visitors from 
all parts of the world, and, as nothing else, will elicit 
the gratitude and praise of mankind towards our 
City. 

In respect to the water supply protected by the 
Park, a kind Providence also seems to intervene with 
His beneficence for the descendants of the colonists 
of Penn. The sulphurous and acid mine water of 
Schuylkill County is riot permitted to reach us with 
its poisonous ingredients ; but these are neutralized 
by the lime-water of Berks, with just enough of 
foreign elements left at the City to coat our lead 
pipes, and keep us secure from lead-poison. The 
treasures of coal laid up for our fuel in the remote 
geological ages we may freely mine, and yet find our 
water purified by the chemistry of nature by the 

II* 



1 26 CONS OLID A TION. 

wide-spread lime-strata interposed for our protection, 
and all the better for the counteracting treatment it 
has undergone, and the action of mineral upon or- 
ganic matter. Truly, Philadelphia was a happily 
chosen site, much more favored than the good Founder 
knew ; and her remoteness from the sea will be her 
future security, while steam-power will readily over- 
come the distance, — the City, in this power, also 
enjoying an advantage unseen by the Proprietary. 
He, judging wisely, as to all he saw, was yet better 
guided than in his day he could possibly foreknow. 
As little could he foresee the railways we see radi- 
ating from this centre to all points of the compass, 
reaching to the remotest points of the Continent, and 
pouring into his Port the products of coal, oil, iron, 
grain of the interior, and even the teas, spices, and 
silks of the far East by the golden gate of the 
farthest West. Neither could William Penn imagine 
the possibility that man could draw from the great 
reservoir of nature the lig^htnincr of the clouds, and 
make it bear his messages instantly over the world, 
to quicken commerce, to counteract social disorders, 
and to maintain the peace at home and over the 
world. With such elements of power- and growth, 
concentrating in our City, the idea seems to us now 
quite preposterous to limit our City to an area of two 
square miles. 

Now, taking our retrospect from the date of the 
Charter for the enlarged City with its enlarged 
powers, its history has had to chronicle no mob of 
any serious magnitude ; there has been a constant 
improvement in the Fire Department; the larger city 



ADVANTAGES. 1 27 

has had fewer fights and fewer fires, and recently 
there has been greatly diminished destruction of 
property by fire and water. There have been better 
municipal and sanitary measures adopted. Measures 
for the increase of trade ; for the extension of our 
shipping facilities from the railroads along both 
rivers towards, and even to, the mouth of the Schuyl- 
kill ; for the greater supply of water and gas ; for the 
increase of drainage \ for greater facilities of educa- 
tion, and provisions of humanity for the poor and 
sick, and a large Park for health and enjoyment, are 
the works achieved, and to be accomplished, because 
no longer thwarted by local jealousies, nor prevented 
by deficiency of power. We are now but one muni- 
cipality, and wherever work shall be done, or money 
be expended, or trade be led and increased, or manu- 
factories be promoted, all will be done for the single 
City and for the benefit of all. The claims of all sec- 
tions must be considered in the distribution of the 
Municipal works and expenditures ; and every im- 
provement and success will gratify the feeling of 
every citizen who has the public spirit to love his 
City, or the religion that teaches us to love our fellow 
beings and rejoice in their success; and all will add 
to the wealth and greatness of our own Philadelphia. 
The establishment of the Survey Department was 
a favorite measure with the writer of this narrative. 
The surveyors of the City and Districts claimed many 
of their plans and records of surveys as their private 
property, and they were subjects of sale to their suc- 
cessors, or might remain in private hands. The pub- 
lic suffered loss in this way, and individuals were 



1 2 8 CONS OLID A TION. 

often left without certain proof of the Hnes of their 
property. Owners of rural lands laid out plots and 
improved, in certain sections, or influenced the sur- 
veys of plots, with a view to the most profitable sales 
of their grounds. Now all City plans must come 
before the Board of Surveys, composed of the Chief 
Engmeer and Surveyor, and all the District Sur- 
veyors, which commands the knowledge and skill of 
all, to insure the best systems of streets, grades, sur- 
face drainage, and underground sewers; while all 
these must be the special study of the Engineer-in- 
Chief These systems will secure harmony and fit- 
ness of work, and prevent much future loss in the 
destruction of work done without regard to an ulti- 
mate plan for the whole. Mr. Kneass has done much 
to establish this Department. Surveys of lots are 
now preserved in the central office, and every owner's 
property will, when the work is completed, be found 
plotted there in books, easily referred to by indexes 
and this record will in all the future establish the 
hnes of ownership, as well as constitute a certain 
basis for the ascertainment of property and ownership 
for the assessment and the collection of taxes. This 
work is always to be kept up to the latest moment 
for every deed of conveyance is required by law tJ 
be registered and plotted in the Survey Department 
before it can be recorded. None can now, as many 
formerly did, escape a ratable share of the public 
taxes. 

The valuations of real estate within the City re- 
turned by the Board of Revision at the close of 1872 
will indicate the growth of the City in wealth com- 



A D VA NTA GES. 1 29 

pared with the aggregate of the whole City and 
County in 1854, though the difference be partly 
owing to the more full and faithful valuations now 
made. In 1853 the aggregate valuation was ^128,- 
218,658; in 1872 it is ;g5 1 8,234,568. This Board for 
the revision of the Taxes is an outgrowth of Con- 
solidation, created by a Law prepared by a Commis- 
sion appointed by Mayor Henry, under an Ordinance 
of City Councils, consisting of Eli K. .Price, Joseph 
A. Clay, Andrew D. Cash, James C. Hand, and Wil- 
liam Bucknell. It was created by act of 14th March, 
1865. The Board can control the work of the asses- 
sors ; can equalize the valuations of the Wards with 
each other, and every several property in comparison 
with others ; can see that none are omitted, and that 
no favor shall be shown to one owner above another. 
The appointment of the members being in the Court 
of Common Pleas, there are no political changes in 
it, and the incumbents become and continue to be 
well acquainted with their duties. Thus far they 
have been intelligent, honest, independent, and wise. 
The character and stability of this Board make it a 
valuable source of information to the public, and of 
increase of the City's revenue. Yet they have ob- 
served the wise policy of not valuing manufacturing 
apparatus and machinery, whereby large encourage- 
ment is given to the establishment of manufactories 
within our City limits ; where fuel, water, iron, etc. 
are abundant at low prices. The above valuations 
do not include properties exempted from taxation; 
exempted because belonging to the public, or held 
for charitable or religious uses. Their valuation is 



1 30 CONSOLIDA TION. 

^54,488,329. It would be v/orse than idle to tax 
Public property, as the same Treasury would then 
both pay and receive ; it would be an obstruction to 
the progress of civilization and the preservation of 
good order and humanity to tax Schools, Churches, 
Hospitals. No taxes collected can be made to do 
more good than these do; and it is due to those deep 
sentiments which most secure human well-being, 
that the youth should be educated ; that those of all 
ages should be preserved religious ; that the sick, 
wounded, aged, and dying should have shelter, sup- 
port, medical treatment, and comfort ; and that all 
the dead should rest securely in their graves. If any 
property that ministers to any of these objects could 
be taxed, it could be sold by the sheriff, and its sacred 
use be utterly destroyed. 

Though our system of public schools had been a 
good one, partly because not limited in its scope 
to any local municipality, more and better school 
houses have been built by the combined power act- 
ing as one City ; and lately a more elevated liberality 
has been displayed by the Councils than ever before. 
The Alms House had long been a place of useful 
study and experience to the medical and surgical 
students ; but within the present year the City has 
vested a square of contiguous ground in the Univer- 
sity of Pennsylvania, to be used as a Hospital, the con- 
sideration being the reception and treatment there of 
a certain number of poor patients, who would other- 
wise be a charge to the City; and there the medical 
students will hear the Clinical lectures of the Profes- 
sors. Philadelphia is about to be reassured of her 



ADVANTAGES. 131 

pre-eminence as a great centre of medical and surgi- 
cal instruction, in competition with the enterprise 
of other large cities. She yet wants, but in time will 
have, a Hotel for strangers, where patients of ability 
to pay, shall have the comforts of home, with home 
quietude, and fresh air, as well as medical and surgical 
treatment, by physicians and surgeons of their own 
choice. The University has enlarged, and is contin- 
uing to enlarge, her sphere of Scientific instruction, 
with eminent Professors; her citizens and the State 
have made large contributions towards her objects, 
and we may confidently look forward to the period 
when we shall cherish a just pride in our highest 
school of science and learning. 

Another Municipal Board followed Consolidation, 
of great public utility, the Inspectors of Buildings. 
The Act creating it, and which exacts of the In- 
spectors the duty of enforcing its provisions, defines 
the thickness of the walls ; requires them to be sub- 
stantial ; to be just in the construction of walls be- 
tween adjoining owners ; requires the division wall 
to be carried at least ten inches above the roof, and 
such parapet elevation to be covered by stone or 
metal ; so as effectually to prevent any connection of 
the roofing or wooden cornice of any two or more 
houses ; nor shall it be lawful for any person to build 
any wooden joist, rafter, beam or girder in any chim- 
ney or flue whatever. And the storage of gunpow- 
der, saltpetre, and petroleum has been placed under 
stringent regulations. The late experiences as to fires 
indicate the necessity of yet greater precautions for 
safety from the spread of fires, and especially in the 



13: 



CONSOLIDA TION. 



avoidance of all Mansard and other roofs of wood. 
Bricks, by these severest tests, are restored to favor 
as the most fire-proof material for buildings, since 
marble, sand-stone, and granite crumble, and the 
metals are melted, beneath the force and fury of such 
fires as those of Chicago and Boston. 



CHAPTER IX. 

CONCLUSION. 

The writer would further here express his opinion 
that the preservation of the history of Philadelphia has 
been quite too much neglected by her citizens. News- 
papers to which few have access are the chief resource 
of information to any one who would attempt the 
task of chronicling civic events ; and these are widely 
scattered and traceable by no index. There are 
many decades of our City's history of which we know 
next to nothing, and we never shall know more. 
We know little of generations of good and wise men, 
whom we know to have here lived, and who faith- 
fully performed their duties in their age, but whose 
many good deeds have been buried with them. And 
of the last decade, the most eventful of the nation's 
history, in which our City acted the most patriotic 
and distinguished part, to maintain our common 
Government, and as consequence now bears the 
burden of eleven millions eight hundred thousand 
dollars of debt incurred to fill the Armies of the 
Country with soldiers, and support their wives, 
widows and children, who will write its History? who 
will do justice to those memorable years ? The ma- 
terials are abundant, and we have many citizens among 
us who acted a distinguished part in those events, 

12 (133) 



134 CONSOLIDATION. 

some of whom have the ability to narrate them as 
they should be written. The City will expect one 
or more of them to perform this duty to our age and 
to posterity. This period is only here further to be 
referred to, in its relation to the purpose of the pres- 
ent narrative, with the congratulation that at a time 
when citizens were at deadly enmity according to 
their sympathies with the respective belligerents, 
there was in our streets no bloody strife, or incen- 
diarism ; and the whole power of the community was 
exerted as a unit in the service of the nation, with 
few individual exceptions. No city or citizens can 
deserve from the pen of the historian higher appro- 
bation and honor, than he will justly bestow upon 
Philadelphia and her people, for their deeds during 
the war of the slaveholders' rebellion. Of this war 
we can with approximate accuracy count the fearful 
cost in life and treasure ; but who can count the 
widows and orphans bereft of husband, father and 
protector ? and who again can estimate the benefits 
to all of the secured stability of the national Govern- 
ment and the prestige of its power over the civilized 
world ? who can calculate the blessings to humanity 
and the acquisitions to liberty, secured by the 
amendments to the national Constitution, with their 
guarantied permanence by the repeated expressions 
of the voice of the nation ? Out of great evils the 
Almighty has brought great good, transcending all 
previous human expectation. 

This narrative must here close. The history of 
the City's Consolidation should have an abiding in- 
terest for citizens of Philadelphia, on many accounts. 



CONCLUSION. 135 

The grounds of its achievement should be the reasons 
of its perpetuation. The objects of the City's re- 
foundation should be kept in view for their yet more 
perfect fulfilment. The evils intended to be sup- 
pressed are not to be forgotten; and if any of the 
suppressed or other evils should reappear they should 
be met promptly and efficiently in their first presenta- 
tion. Our thousand or more policemen under one 
head, with the quick warnings of the electric tele- 
graph, will suffice to meet riotous proceedings before 
they reach to a dangerous head ; and as the City 
grows the number of the police will be increased. If 
these need to be supported by the military, a single 
Executive can instantly command their service. 
Under the existing system firemen's riots cannot 
occur. With the use of Steam Engines, a few men 
can perform the required service; and under com- 
mand of efficient officers their discipline is assured. 
Besides, their compensated service and the necessity 
they are under of preserving order and obedience to 
procure livelihood, will always secure good character 
and orderly conduct. With one jurisdiction the 
criminal can no longer cross a near invisible line, 
and then turn to defy and deride his official pursuer. 
Still great, very great, evils may, and will, and do 
assail us. The machinery of government may be the 
best that can be framed by man ; yet if the public 
servants lack ability and vigilance it will not work 
well. If the life of the living body become cor- 
rupt the canker is deadly, and must be utterly ex- 
scinded to save the life. That duty of excision rests 
with the people, and their vigilance is of ceaseless 



1 3 6 CONS OLID A TION. 

necessity ; a duty to be executed fearlessly and as 
unsparingly as we deal with criminals who commit 
theft, burglary, or arson. 

This delinquency is the most dreadful depravity 
that a Republic can have to deal with ; for it is trea- 
son to the fundamental principle of free government, 
that of trust in the public servants. When the sense 
of honesty in these is lost, those elected to protect 
the public become its deadly enemies ; and besides the 
instincts of the thief these incur the odium of the 
meanness of treachery, falsehood, and deception. The 
official who steals the public money commits the crime 
of theft and also betrays a public trust; is guilty of 
treason to his own manhood, for he loses all sense of 
honor. If infamy can have its grades, his must be 
the lowest. He also commits treason to the Re- 
public, imperils law and liberty, and makes way for 
despotism. Such an one should find no forgiveness; 
and his crime should be accounted an unpardonable 
sin. No political party can permit its public repre- 
sentatives to become corrupt, and live long in the 
confidence of the people; and they are the best 
friends of any party who will insist upon its being 
thoroughly purged of all corruption. Let all parties 
take a lesson of greatest value from the triumph of 
Consolidation. Because the existing political parties, 
in their party organizations, would not obey the re- 
peated voice of the people, the people took the 
measure into their own hands, and cut out their solid 
majority from the disciplined ranks of all parties. 
What was then done can and will be done, again 
and again, rather than that chronic corruption shall 



CONCLUSION. 13^ 

exist in public places, or in the ballot. Were these 
the last sentiments I had to leave with my fellow- 
citizens, I would utter them as my most solemn 
warnings, and pray that they may never be forgotten. 
I pray Almighty God to protect our beloved City 
of Philadelphia ; to preserve her from every calamity; 
to confer upon her every blessing; and to preserve 
the virtues of her people. I especially pray that, as 
in the beginning she was founded and built and 
governed by good men in the great interests of civili- 
zation and justice, of liberty, religion, and humanity, 
so may our city be preserved to be the home of those 
sacred blessings, and to secure the greatest sum of 
human welfare and happiness through the ceaseless 
centuries of Time ! 



12' 



INDEX. 



Advantages, 27, 58, 90. 
Argument, 49, etc. 

Baldwin, M. W., 22, 32, 33. 
Bigler, Gov., 47, 94. 
Bill, preparation, 28, 32. 

signed, 47. 
Binney's, Hor., Letter, 18. 
Junior, 21. 
Board of Revision, 127. 
Borough, 9. 
Building Inspectors, 130, 

Celebration, 89. 
Centennial Celebration, 122. 
Centre of City, 57. 
Charitable properties, 128-9. 
Charters, ist and 2d, 9. 
Check of Parties, 'jj. 
City, Charters of, 11, 82. 

lots, first purchasers, 9. 

situation, 10. 

the largest, 80. 
Committee on Bill, 32, etc., 38. 
Confederation, 63. 

amendments, 88. 

provisions, 65, 66, etc. 
Consolidation, requisite, 12, 18, 26. 

committee, 28, 32, 38, etc. 

history, 133. 

reformers, 14. 
Constitutional recognition, 11. 
Controller, 84. 

Corporntions, many, 53, 54, 55. 
Corruption, 18, 23, 87, 134. 
Councils' opposition, 38. 

Departments, 84. 

Depravity, 135. 

Disparity of growth between City 

and County, 12, 58, 59. 
Districts, incorporations, 14, 52. 

Elections, 23, 65, etc. 
Evils, 18. 



Executive Committee, 15, 17. 

duties, 84. 
Exempt properties, 128-9. 

Fairmount Park, 123. 
Festivities, 89. 
Fire Brigade, 117. 
Fire Companies, volunteer, 17, 117 
meeting against, 17. 

department, 85, 117, 119. 
Firemen, 18, 117, 118. 

security from, 130. 
Frauds, 18, 23, 87, 134. 

Gas supply, 120. 
Government, 63. 
Groggery system, 18, 25. 
Grounds for Consolidation, 49. 
Growth of Philadelphia, 12, 57, etc. 
75, 127, etc. 

Health, Board of, 53. 
History of City, 132. 
Holmes, Thomas, 9, 10. 
Hospital, 129. 
Hotel, medical, 130. 

Identity of City, 72, 82. 
Improvements, 52, 120, etc., 125. 
Increase, rate, 57. 
Inspectors of buildings, 131. 
Intemperance, 25. 

Legislative obligation, 56. 

power, 62. 
Liberty Lost, 9. 
Loans, 88. 

Local Corporations, 53, 54, 55. 
London, 13, 60. 

Mayor, 83, 117. 

McMichael, Morton, Pres't of 

Committee, 32, 38, 90. 
Medical Schools, 129-30. 
Members of Legislature, 33, 89. 

(139) 



140 



INDEX. 



Memorial, i6, 36. 
Military (see Mobs), 134. 
Mobs, 16, 52, 83, 109 to 116. 

Newspapers for Consolidation, 31. 
Nominating Convention, 23, 29. 

Official depravity, 135. 

Paid Fire Department, 17, 117. 
Paris, 60. 
Park, 123. 

Passing of Bill, 36, 38, 47. 
Patterson, Wm. C, 22, 33, 47. 
Penn, Wm., 9, 10. 
Pennsylvania Hall, no. 
Philadelphia foimded, 9. 

Charters, 11, 82, 
Police, 61, 134. 
Political parties, 'jj. 
Poor, Guardians of, 53. 
Population of City, 12, 52, 57. 
Powers, 83. 
Price's, Eli K., letters, 22, 107. 

conditions, 21, 26, 28. 
Progress, slow, 120. 
Provisions of Charter, 82. 
Public Schools, 129. 

Rebellion, 132. 
Receiver, 84. 
Report to Senate, 49. 
Representation, 64, etc., 66, etc. 
Resolutions of Committee, 38. 
Revision of Taxes, 127. 
Riots, 52, 

Rush's, Richard, Letter, 30, 
Speech, 106. 

Schools, 54, 129, 130. 
Security from fire, 130. 
Self-government, 61. 
Single elective districts, 66, etc. 
Sinking fund, 88. 



Site, favorable, 10, 125. 

Speeches of, M. McMichael,46,9o 
F. Fraley, 40, 103 ; H. Bin 
ney, Jr., 42; John M. Ken 
nedy, 43 ; Col. Jas. Page, 43 
Hy. M. Watts, 44; Wm. L 
Hirst, 45 ; And'w. Miller, 45 
Governor Bigler, 94 ; Mr 
Chase, 98 ; Judge Lewis, 99 
George iSL Dallas, 99 ; Sen- 
ator Cooper, loi ; Consul 
Matthew, 102; George M. 
Keim, 105 ; Wm. D. Lewis, 
105 ; Richard Rush, 106. 

State Rights. 62. 

Steam Fire Engines, 134. 

Survey Department, 126. 

Tavern Licenses, 25. 
Taxables, 59, 66. 
Taxation, base of, 76. 
Tax Collectors, 24. 

collection, 76. 
Taxes, revision of, 127. 

Exempt, 128-9. 
Town Meeting, 14. 
Town Plot, 9, 10. 
Treasurer, 84. 
Trusts, 5. 

Unity of Philadelphia, 64, 
University, 130. 
Hospital, 129. 

Valuations, 127. 
Vigilance of people, 134. 
Visit to Harrisburg, 17. 
Volunteer Fire Companies, 17, 
Voting, 64, etc. 

War of Rebellion, 132. 

Wards, 83. 

Water supply, 120, 124. 



THE END. 



^ 



? ' 

















c^ 



-^^ .! 




¥^ '^^ 


















• < o • 













.^' 



• ^'•. -^c 



^^C^^^ 



^^ '*"° A^ ^ "^ -sV^ .. ^*^ • 






<^. 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




014 311 868 A 



